LONDON - Market analysts Datamonitor has said in its latest report that even though the penetration of broadband was immense in Western Europe, it was beginning to hit a "sweet spot."
The report titled, 'Consumer broadband markets: approaching maturity?' says that the penetration of consumer broadband in terms of households will eventually settle around the 60 percent mark.
"With some markets potentially experiencing changes in the household penetration of broadband of up 10% in a calendar year, service providers must be well positioned to take advantage of the forthcoming penetration acceleration, prior to the inevitable slowdown," said Tim Gower, an analysts with Datamonitor and author of the current report. He added that growth was increasing exponentially in advanced markets, but that it was beginning to level off.
Datamonitor predicted that close to 8 million households in the United Kingdom would have the high-speed net connections by 2008. Currently, 57.4 percent of all net connections in the country are broadband as compared to 42.6 for dial-up. This percentage for dial-up connections has fallen dramatically by 28.7 percent over the last 12 months.
Datamonitor's report concludes by saying that it will be at least 18 to 24 months before the saturation point is reached across Western Europe, "Although, there will be a variation in this process across markets, service providers must clearly ensure that they are in the best position to take advantage of the various country opportunities," observed Gower.
But in the UK, the subscriber numbers for broadband grew by only 1 percent in the period between August and September this year.
Posted
on : Tue, 29 Nov 2005 06:45 GMT | General News
By : Rob Davis
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