Worldwide DSL penetration tops 30 million

The number of global DSL subscribers grew 20% in the third quarter, bringing the number of digitized lines worldwide to 30.6 million, according to new figures released by the DSL Forum today.

The highest growth rates were seen in developing regions such as Eastern Europe and South & South East Asia, with growth rates of 35.2% and 136.8% respectively, but North America appears to be cooling as a hotbed of growth. Of all of the world’s regions it had the lowest percentage increase of lines at just 11.07%. By Comparison, the world’s largest DSL regions Western Europe and East Asia saw growth in the third quarter of 16.8% and 14.7% respectively.

North America’s slow down may be partially attributed to it’s slightly higher penetration numbers. Globally 3.2% of the world’s main phone lines now carry some type of DSL service. North America has a penetration rate of 3.5%, a distant second place to East Asia, which reached a penetration of 8.4% last quarter.

The country with the highest penetration rate was again South Korea with 26.7% of all phone lines and 39.4% of all households. In the U.S. three of every hundred phone lines is digitized and 5.4% of all households carry DSL services.