Asian DSL hitting saturation point

The U.S. still had the second largest number of DSL users behind China at the end of 2005, but European markets such as the Italy, Spain and Germany are growing are rapid clips, according to the latest research from Point-Topic.

China, which ended the year with more than 25 million DSL users, grew 56% from 2004. While impressive for most markets, Point-Topic believes it’s just one indicator that some Asian nations are reaching a saturation point. South Korea, long pointed to as the most penetrated market in the world, actually lost 250,000 DSL lines last year.

In Europe, the UK was the fastest growing Top Ten country for the year, adding over 3 million DSL lines to increase its installed base by 73%. However, the country only grew its DSL lines by 12.4% in the fourth quarter. Overall, European DSL lines grew by more than 40%. U.S. DSL lines grew 8.8%.

The fastest growth was shown to be in developing countries. Turkey, for example, added more than 1 million lines to a total of 1.54 million, while Mexico added 900,000 to pass 1.6 million.