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Broadband Market Report – The world dynamics in 2020

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BuddeComm is an independent research and consultancy company. We focus on the telecommunications market and its role within the digital economy.

Our market reports have been utilized by Telco Operators, Governments, Banks and Consulting Firms since 1978.

Analysts, Investors, Consultants use our broadband reports to :

  • 1. Planning investments by tailoring the strategy for the local economy 
  • 2. Finding industry data and analyses on emerging markets and developing market segments
  • 3. Feed market analysis with the latest trusted and manually checked data 
  • 4. Understand the Broadband market trends and build easy to sell products and services 

We have written this series of articles to help you analyse any broadband market in the world in 2 hours or less.

How ?

You can start by reading this series of articles.

But if you can’t wait, feel free to visit our reports store. You can download the reports and the Broadband data forecasts we publish in a minute.

Let’s start with a short introduction on the Broadband Industry

A key driver of global fixed broadband growth around the world is the increasing appetite for bandwidth. This is led by the emerging markets of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The growth of data centres and cloud technology is also creating a need for high-speed broadband infrastructure.

From a consumer perspective, high-speed fixed broadband access is used for home-based entertainment services including 4K TVs, multiple-player gaming, virtual reality, video-on-demand and video streaming. Services such as e-health (feel free to have a look at the WHO page here) and e-government (more info on wikipedia) also require reliable and fast broadband access.

For these reasons, fibre networks have become a key investment area. And most national high-speed broadband network projects are now based around Fibre-to-the-Premises (FttP). There is also a boom in submarine cable build-outs underway around the world.

And so, the 10 Top Countries in Number of Fixed Broadband Subscriptions are…..

Driving this growth is the recognition by governments that high-speed broadband networks are essential for future society developments relating to smart cities and smart infrastructure. They have the potential to radically change the world.

Fixed broadband infrastructure has become important for the economic growth. A global study by the ITU finding that on average“…an increase of 10 per cent in fixed broadband penetration yielded an increase in 0.8 per cent in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita.” (Note: Study included 139 countries and was conducted between 2010 and 2017).

It is expected that by 2025, there will be around 1.2 billion fixed broadband subscribers worldwide. Of these subscribers, around 59% would be using a variant of fibre-based fixed broadband access, according to a study by Point Topic.

Global – fixed broadband subscribers – 2010 – 2020

Year Fixed broadband subscribers (billion)
2010 0.52
2011 0.59
2012 0.64
2013 0.69
2014 0.73
2015 0.83
2016 0.91
2017 1.00
2018 1.05
2019 (e) 1.09
2020 (e) 1.12

Source: BuddeComm based on ITU and Point Topic, 2019

Note: Feel free to contact us to get the latest data update

Now if you are interested in qualitative informations about broadband market trends, BuddeComm participated at the Broadband World Forum where we conducted interviews with leading professionals.

We interviewed 22 professionals (operators, equipment vendors, associations…) and concluded 4 challenges from the summit :

  1. CHALLENGE 1

    How can telecom operators make sure that the network coverage inside a home is as strong as it is outside the subscribers’ door?

  2. CHALLENGE 2

    How can telcos reach even more people?

  3. CHALLENGE 3

    How is white box economics developing ?

  4. CHALLENGE 4

    From a hardware network to a software network : what are the consequences to telcos

A very good way to assess a Broadband market is to analyse the gouvernement’s broadband strategy

The majority of governments around the world have now accepted that national broadband networks are the way forward. 140 countries around the world have concrete national broadband networks in place.

 The challenge now is to put these policies into practice and implement thems. Ultimately all of these broadband plans will require national fibre optic networks. There simply is no other technology that can handle the capacity of data and applications that will be needed to run the cities and countries from today onwards. This infrastructure needs to be robust. It has to have enormous capacity. It needs to be secure and to be able to protect privacy.

All agree that a broadband infrastructure is needed to face the economic and social challenges that lie ahead. Broadband infrastructure is perceived by all to be critical for the development of the digital economy, healthcare, education, e-government and so on. The resource-rich countries have embarked on large-scale FttP projects in order to diversify their economies.

With more and more countries rolling out FttP networks, the knowledge base of the technology has increased. At the same time the cost of deployment has decreased. Around the world, FttP has become the norm in Greenfield deployments.

A well-designed network will be able to support different applications in the future, including those not well supported by either today’s ‘telecom’ or ‘Internet’, or other applications not even conceived yet. The most important technological consideration should be that it is flexible.

It will take time to achieve the big social and economic benefits. The key reason for this are that the availability of fast broadband is sufficiently new and insufficiently ubiquitous that we cannot yet expect to see all of the productivity benefits.

Key Statistics on the broadband market :

FttP rollouts are occurring in some developing economies such as Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, and India, where there is demand in at least the top 5% of the market. And in such economies this immediately translates into tens of millions of users.

In terms of broadband penetration, the top 5 countries globally include: Switzerland; Norway; Denmark; The Netherlands and France.

Resolving the issues surrounding control and governance of the Internet is of fundamental importance to the future success of the Internet.

There is no doubt that the Google Fiber project been a success. And it has announced over 30 more areas which it will move into with its fibre networks – putting more and more pressure on the US incumbents.

Global broadband speeds continue to rise and the global average sat at 4.5 mb/s.

Because global broadband market prices are declining in most parts of the world, it is now more affordable, more obtainable to the greater population. But in many of the developing countries the average decline rate in broadband pricing has begun to slow.

With more and more video applications being used in ever increasing broader markets, there is a widespread interest and pressure to offer higher-speed services.

Because Asia is a key broadband market, it accounted for around 46% of global fixed broadband subscribers.

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