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DSL Adds 24 million Global subscribers

Half a million choose DSL every week.

Latest subscriber numbers published for January - September 2004.

More than half a million people each week are choosing DSL around the world. DSL - the world's most popular broadband technology - added another 24 million subscribers in the first nine months of 2004, according to the latest data produced for the DSL Forum by industry analyst Point Topic. There are now 85.3 million subscribers - a growth of more than 39% so far in 2004.  

Announcing the figures at the DSL Forum's year-end meeting, its president Tom Starr said, "By the time we next meet in February 2005, DSL subscribers will have passed the 100 million subscriber milestone - a major landmark on the way to a global mass market for this world-leading broadband technology. That will mean 10% of the world's phone lines are delivering the very real benefits of the digital society to people in every region."

European Union countries currently make up the largest regional DSL population worldwide, adding more than 9.25 million subscribers in the first three quarters of this year, to reach 26.5 million.    

Latin America is now emerging as a DSL market, adding 1.2 million subscribers from January to September 2004, a growth in subscribers of more than 72%. Brazil is leading the way, gaining over 620,000 DSL subscribers, and three countries, Mexico, Argentina and Peru, have experienced more than 50% growth since the beginning of the year.  

In North America, the only region where DSL does not yet dominate the broadband market, it gained almost 3.5 million new subscribers to achieve 15.1 million by the end of September 2004. The USA added 3.2 million to reach a total of 12.6 million DSL-enabled phone lines. Middle East and Africa recorded DSL subscriber growth of 59.5% in the first three quarters of 2004, led by Israel, now with 600,000 and Turkey, with almost 200,000.  

Asia Pacific added almost four million subscribers, with two countries reaching the DSL Forum's first stage target for a global mass-market for broadband DSL (20% of all phone lines): South Korea (28.88%) and Taiwan (22.14%). Even with its high penetration rate, South Korea is still growing and added 280,000 to its DSL market by September 2004. Hong Kong (20.14%) also achieved mass-market status, and an additional 15 countries have a penetration of more than 10% of telephone lines.

The European Union's position as the number one DSL region is reflected in substantial increases in both subscriber numbers and market penetration, with 11 countries in the top 20. The Netherlands achieved 15.52% penetration of phone lines, France 15.45% and Italy 13.41%, with the UK, at 9.49%, moving into the top 20 for the first time.  

Top 20 countries: DSL penetration (DSL/100 phone lines) 30 September 2004  

South Korea

28.88

Taiwan

22.14

Hong Kong

20.14

Israel

19.35

Belgium

19.15

Japan

17.91

Finland

16.56

Denmark

15.89

Netherlands

15.52

France

15.45

Singapore

14.32

Switzerland

13.44

Italy

13.41

Canada

12.87

Spain

11.91

Norway

11.82

Sweden

11.42

Germany

11.08

Austria

9.63

UK

9.49

China, adding 5.14 million new DSL subscribers by the end of September 2004, is the world's largest DSL population with a total of 13.7 million subscribers, accounting for more than 90% of the South and South East Asia total.

Six countries now have greater than five million subscribers, and another seven countries have over a million.  

Top 20 countries - Total DSL subscribers Q3 30 September 2004  

China

13,700,000

Japan

12,739,564

USA

12,594,346

South Korea

6,717,251

Germany

5,950,000

France

5,253,000

Italy

3,680,000

UK

3,335,000

Taiwan

2,900,000

Canada

2,568,351

Spain

2,227,805

Brazil

1,633,700

Netherlands

1,552,000

Belgium

983,000

Australia

910,000

Hong Kong

774,000

Sweden

751,000

Switzerland

717,000

Israel

600,000

Denmark

594,000

The ten largest DSL population countries now account for more than 80% of DSL subscribers worldwide. Tim Johnson of Point Topic commented: "This is a classic pattern for the early stages of a dynamic market. We can now see growth rates leveling off as leading countries like South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong approach 30% market penetration. But there's another cycle of growth still to come. We'll see new broadband applications beginning to take hold, like voice and video that will drive the next cycle and then, in a year or two, broadband will be going into homes that have no interest in owning PCs or surfing the Internet."  

Tom Starr of the DSL Forum added, "These third quarter results clearly demonstrate the enormous strength and growth potential for DSL. In 2005, the DSL Forum will continue to facilitate exemplary DSL growth by advancing new technical developments and expanding the scope of our market education."    

Further data on specific countries, charts and graphs are available on request.  

The DSL Forum is an international industry consortium of more than 200 leading service providers, equipment manufacturers and other interested parties, focused on developing the full potential of broadband DSL to meet the needs of the mass market.

Working to streamline processes, develop specifications and share best practices, the Forum's work sets the stage for effective deployments, and explosive global DSL growth. By evolving DSL technology to embrace new applications, the DSL Forum is tailoring DSL to meet the needs of the next generation of multi-media services and the online community. Recognised as the voice of the DSL industry, the Forum has set a target of 500 million broadband DSL subscribers by 2010.

More information about the DSL Forum is available from its industry site www.dslforum.org . Information tailored to end-users is available on www.dsllife.com .   DSL - more than a phone line - it's a global solution.

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© 2004 The Internet Society of New Zealand

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