The latest report (World Broadband Statistics) from the research firm Point Topic shows that the global broadband subscription has increased by 4.6 percent during the first quarter of 2008. Accordingly, , the broadband subscription globally has reached 367.7 million by the end of first quarter of 2008 as against 351.12 million customers by the end of Q4 2007.

During the same period, the fibre based broadband or FTTx services continued to witness faster growth in countries like Japan, South Korea and China of the Asia Pacific region. Interestingly, fibre based broadband services seemed to replace the cable broadband networks in many nations around the world. The report shows that 4.2 million new fiber connections were added globally, while the cable broadband managed to add just 2.5 million connections during the last quarter.

However, DSL broadband has been used by the majority of users (65 %) in the world and rose by 4.06 percent during the Q1 2008. Cable broadband has been used by one-fifth of the global broadband customers (21.66 %) and had 3.3 percent growth during the previous quarter. However, fibre broadband witnessed the fastest growth and currently, accounts for 11.3 % of the total broadband connections in the world.

Oliver Johnson, the CEO of Point Topic has commented:

“It’s a significant milestone for fibre optic broadband, where it is available consumers will take fibre over other broadband technologies. If you look at the cost per megabit then DSL comes in at around $20 (£10) per megabit per month taking global averages. Cable does better at roughly $12 (£6) but they are both completely eclipsed by fibre where costs can get as low as 50 cents (£0.25) per megabit per month.”

“There are problems in the de-regulated markets when it comes to major infrastructure investment. Fibre deployment is expensive and in the US and Europe there are significant regulatory hurdles to overcome,”