Broadband, IPTV continue strong growth

Broadband grew by 16.6 million lines globally in the first quarter of the year, 3 million of which were in North America, according to the Broadband Forum. Even with the economy causing many operators to rein in spending, both broadband and IPTV bucked trends with strong growth throughout the quarter.

The Broadband Forum is discussing its first-quarter global IPTV and broadband findings, prepared by industry analysts Point Topic, today at CommunicAsia in Singapore. Point Topic found that globally broadband lines now top 429.2 million, with growth in the first quarter slightly up from the previous three months. North America, in particular, grew 3.87% to more than 93.5 million but was outpaced by 20 countries that each saw more than 10% growth in the same time period.

Broadband has become the norm in the modern lifestyle, Broadband Forum secretary Tom Starr said in a conference call preceding today's announcement. Countries that were slow to get off the ground with broadband are catching up with the early adopters, but growth is occurring in both regions, he said, noting that broadband providers are not only adding more lines but faster lines as well.

"If you think back to when the deployment of broadband really became a major factor in a lot of countries, that was 15 years ago," Starr said. "Over every one of those 15 years, we have seen strong sustained growth, and that continues through to the most recent report year – the strong growth continues. To do that over a 15-year period and to reach where we are now, with 429 million served around the world -- I think that is remarkable. And, of course, we expect that to continue."

DSL is still the leading broadband access technology, although fiber grew by more than 3 million lines to capture 12.4% of the market, Point Topic found. Wireless, too, grew in the quarter, increasing its total lines by more than 1 million to 5.58 million. Starr didn't have stats for the number of DSL lines replaced by passive optical networks (PON) or fiber-to-the-home, but he said DSL's share has gone down a bit, while fiber-based architectures – including both ADSL2+ and VDSL –clearly grew the most.

For IPTV deployments, North America had growth of more than 15% over the last quarter and 94.2% improvement from this time last year. Even with IPTV's biggest operators, including AT&T, reporting more conservative growth projections, nearly 4.5 million lines of IPTV now cross North America, the Forum said. Starr echoed other industry analysts in his optimism for continued growth in IPTV as well.

"In many of the regions, the yearly growth is approximately 100%," Starr said. "It is just really growing like crazy in a lot of regions. That is driving of course the higher-speed forms of broadband access, VDSL and ADSL2+."

The Broadband Forum recently completed its merger with the IP/MPLS Forum and held its first meeting last month. With IP/MPLS's influence, the combined organization is focusing more heavily on the IP network core specifications, including backbone efforts and access-core aggregation. Last week, the Forum completed its Splitter Testing Technical Report (TR) 127 aimed at improving quality of service and IPTV customer satisfaction. It also worked with the Femto Forum and 3GPP on the recently completed TR-096, a femtocell access point management standard that applies to both integrated femtocell functionality and the residential gateway. Starr said the standard focuses heavily on management but not the entire implementation process.