Steady Broadband Growth in Spite of Recession Surprises Analysts
The poor economic situation is apparently not having much of an impact on the global broadband industry, which has been growing steadily in the face of recession.
Point Topic, the analyst firm, has increased its forecast of global fixed line broadband connections from 493 to 496 million, to be reached by the end of this year. The five-year forecast has also been upgraded to 695 million instead of the previous 683 million.
Tim Johnson, chief analyst at Point Topic, said that one of the main reasons for increasing the forecast numbers was the continuous strong broadband growth in the developing countries. The company feels certain that this growth is not going to take a hit anytime soon, despite the recession, and has thus made the changes in its estimates.
Point Topic makes roadband uptake predictions by looking at the number of new connections taken up by non-broadband homes. By monitoring this number over a period of time, the analysts are able to come up with a trend for broadband growth. This trend is then used to make both short term and long terms predictions.
Recently the company had made a few modifications to its forecasts to account for the global recession, and most of these modifications are now being rolled back after looking at the stubborn demand from developing countries.
Point Topic is also of the opinion that Denmark will be overshadowed by Norway in terms of the rate of broadband adoption, by 2012. This will make
Tim Johnson clarified that there are some countries where broadband has indeed taken a blow due to recession. Some of these countries like Taiwan, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland already have a very high broadband uptake, so it has come to the point where only a few homes are left without broadband. However, broadband industry in countries like Spain and the UK, he said, are actually facing major difficulties.
