There were 10.388mn IPTV subscribers in Western Europe at the end of 2008, up 45% from 7.046mn one year previously, according to new figures from the Broadband Forum, a pan-industry initiative to empower service providers by developing standards focused on home-to-core network and management solutions.
France was calculated to be the the largest IPTV market in Western Europe, accounting for over half of the region's subscribers. North America came in second in terms of IPTV subscribers by region, with 3,835,544 subscribers at the end of 2008, compared to 1,774,671 at the end of 2007. Globally, there were an estimated 21,836,687 subscribers to IPTV services around the world at the end of 2008, up 63% from 13,344,573 one year previously.
“During 2008, IPTV operators showed that TV over IP could be deployed on a large scale," said John Bonsell, a Senior Analyst with Point Topic, who prepared the stats for the Broadband Forum. "Western Europe remains the largest single region for IPTV. As expected, due to the global economic situation, broadband growth slowed, however all countries experienced overall growth during the last year."
IPTV subscribers per region
Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic
In terms of global broadband growth, there were an estimated 410.9mn broadband subscribers at the end of 2008, with 62.6mn connections added during the year. While growth was described as being slower later in the year generally, several countries showed improved performance than that of the third quarter of 2008, including France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Singapore and the Philippines.
“This report shows that despite the economic situation the world is facing, the demand for both broadband and IPTV continues to expand,” added George Dobrowski, Chairman and President of the Broadband Forum.
In terms of broadband access technology, DSL continued to be the most popular, although fibre grew twice as quickly as either cable or DSL in the 12 months to 4Q 2008, passing 50mn connections worldwide by year-end, according to the report. This growth is predicted to continue, given the number of new implementations and consumer and business demand for higher speeds, with value-added services such as IPTV also proving to be strong drivers for FTTx uptake.
