Asia leads global broadband growth

Point Topic (point-topic.com), a UK-based company founded in 1998 whose mission is to provide focused information on broadband communications services, said Asia led global mobile broadband growth for the first quarter of 2011. The report points out that the region enjoyed a 16.2 percent growth compared to the same period in 2010, bringing the total number of fixed broadband subscribers in Asia to 226.4 million by end March 2011. There were 540.69 million broadband subscribers by end Q1 2011 globally. This was up 2.9 per cent on the previous quarter from 525.46 million and up almost 12 per cent year-on-year from 483.06 million. South and East Asia and Western Europe control the majority of the DSL market. Between them they are home to over 221.57 million DSL subscribers, representing almost 65 per cent of the total. South East Asia, which includes the Philippines, reported 122.8 million subscribers (almost 36 per cent) and Western Europe reported 98.76 million (almost 29 per cent). Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., and its subsidiary Smart Communication Inc. said their broadband offerings have driven the country’s internet growth. Smart and PLDT are currently undergoing a massive network upgrade. With P67.1 billion earmarked for updating and installing additional equipment such as cell sites, fiber optic cables, and international gateways, the telecoms conglomerate aims to provide only the best service to the Filipinos as its pursues its goal of providing quality Internet for all. Recently, PLDT and Smart introduced to the market their latest broadband offering that will further increase the number of connected Filipinos. Designed to make Filipino homes fully connected, HOME Plan 1299 combines an unlimited 1Mbps broadband Internet connection (Canopy or WiMax) and a landline phone. HOME Plan 1299 will also come with a year’s worth of free PLDT-to-PLDT NDD calls. "We’re very excited with the possibilities of HOME Plan 1299" said Kathryn Carag, head for home broadband. "This shows that even our fixed broadband products are major driving forces in the growth of the industry." Earlier this month, a series of speed tests by independent engineering firm NESIC, Philippines, Inc. (NPI) shows that Smart Bro subscribers are already benefitting from the improved network. NESIC’s results revealed that Smart Bro bests the competition 100 percent of the time in terms of average download speed. On the broadband front, wireless broadband revenues, inclusive of mobile Internet revenues, increased by 5 percent to P4 billion, compared with the P3.8 billion recorded in the first half of 2010. Wireless broadband revenues now account for 7 percent of wireless service revenues. PLDT Group’s combined broadband subscribers grew 10 percent to 2.2 million subscriber, registered 200,000 net adds in the first half. Of the total, 1.5 million are Smart wireless broadband subscribers.