The latest report from Point-Topic shows that the broadband uptake across the world during the third quarter of 2007 has declined marginally when compared to the previous quarter (Q2). There were estimated to be over 328.8 million broadband connections by the end of third quarter of 2007 and the rise on broadband connections during third quarter was 4.72 percent. This compares with 5.16 percent growth during the previous quarter, the report pointed out.

Except North America, all other broadband regions saw a decline in the uptake of broadband however, the growth in number of new broadband connections in North America was found to be slightly higher than the previous growth ( up by 0.15 percent).

Currently, USA has the largest number of broadband connections worldwide followed by other countries in this order: China, Japan, Germany, UK, France, South Korea, Italy, Canada and Spain. UK has jumped from 8th place to 5th place this time thanks to the expanding network of local looped lines in UK.

In terms of technology used for broadband connection, DSL leads other technologies with over 66 percent of broadband connections worldwide use this technology. Cable broadband has a market share of 21.65 percent currently, followed by fibre based broadband which makes up just over one-tenths of total broadband connections.

As far as broadband growth in Western Europe is concerned, there are over 3.5 million new subscribers have been added during the third quarter of 2007 due to significant contributions from countries like UK, Germany, Italy etc. The number of broadband subscriptions had a growth of 4.05 percent which is slightly less than the broadband growth on global level.

Currently, there are over 14 million broadband customers in UK and the majority of them are connected by ADSL broadband while the sole cable broadband provider, Virgin Media offers cable broadband to over 3.5 million customers across UK.