The State of Broadband 2006: DSL rules for now

The final polls are in: 2006 was a blockbuster of a year for the broadband business worldwide, including US.

At the end of 2006, there were 281 million broadband subscribers world wide, up by 67 million according to London-based Point-Topic.

• DSL subscribers total 185 million, making it the most popular access technology for now, with a 65.7% market share, according to DSL Forum.
• In the US, however, DSL trails, and accounts for 24 million connections versus cable companies have 55% of the total market, with 29.3 million.
• Fiber to the home (and related technologies) now account for 10% of total global broadband connections. We suspect this is a percentage that is only going to grow bigger, especially as Japan, France, US (Verizon) and others aggressively push their FTTx offerings.
• United States is the largest broadband market, with 57 million broadband lines, while China is second with 51.9 million. (They might be bigger than US by now… this is year-end data.)
• US added 10.2 million new broadband subscribers in 2006, according to Leichtman Research Group. Phone companies added 5.5 million, and cable providers added 4.7 million.