How many people worldwide routinely access the Internet through a
"broadband" connection?

For "broadband," read "always on" -- I don't care about the speed,
transport, connection-symmetry or whether the IP allocation is NATted
and/or dynamic.

Hello doctorow!

There are at least 29 million broadband subscribers worldwide, with
the figure rapidly growing.

According to an April article in The Register, a UK IT professionals
publication, there were 19 million users of DSL worldwide at the end
of 2001:

DSL has 19m users worldwide
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/24895.html

Point Topic offers a chart breaking down DSL users by region:

DSL CONFIRMED AS THE WORLD'S LEADING BROADBAND TECHNOLOGY - GLOBAL
DEPLOYMENT HITS 18.7 MILLION DSL SUBSCRIBERS
http://www.dslforum.org/PressRoom/news_rome_03.06.html

MIT's Technology Review estimated that there would be 10 million cable
modem subscribers worldwide by the end of 2001:

Broadband Walks the Last Mile
http://www.techreview.com/articles/wo_brown060501.asp

This is up from a June 7th, 2001 figure of 6.4 million cable
subscribers:

TaskZ.com (from Google's cache)
://www.google.com/search?q=cache:e3DDnTs9BH4C:www.taskz.com/DesignData/fixed_bandwidth_indepth.php+broadband+users+worldwide+cable&hl=en&ie=UTF-8


I hope you find this information helpful!  Please let me know if I can
be of further assistance!

missy-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by doctorow-ga on 07 Jul 2002 16:51 PDT

Can you provide a single citation that sums up all worldwide broadband penetration?

---

Clarification of Answer by missy-ga on 07 Jul 2002 18:06 PDT

Hello again,

Because the cable and DSL industries are competitors, actual industry
figures are rarely reported together, except in detailed market
research papers.  News sources consistently list cable and DSL usage
separately.

I found only one consolidated citation, in an article written by an
internet entertainment company:

"Broadband is the hot new topic in entertainment. With over 30 million
broadband users worldwide and the mathematical growth forecasted, the
future is poised for unlimited economic potential."

COMPANY INFORMATION
http://www.mundiali.com/Mundiali3.htm

I also found several consolidated predictions:

A CyberAtlas report predicted 21 million total subscribers by the end
of 2001:
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/markets/broadband/article/0,1323,10099_783401,00.html

Market Facts predicts 90 million broadband users worldwide by 2004:
http://www.broadjump.com/press/press_kit/BroadJump_MarketFacts_letter.pdf

Broadband Wireless Exchange Magazine offers the same prediction:
http://www.bbwexchange.com/news/emarketer050101.htm

If you're interested in verifiably accurate citations, I did uncover 2
consolidated reports discussing worldwide broadband usage and market
share in detail.

Broadband 2002: DSL & Cable Modem Services Fuel Worldwide Subscriber
Growth
77 pages, published June 2002
$3,495.
http://www.instat.com/abstract.asp?id=95&SKU=IN020132IA

Broadband Access: DSL and Cable Modems 2002-2007
Published by : The Insight Research Corporation
February 2002
$ 4195
http://www.gii.co.jp/english/ir8805_broadband_access_toc.html

Hope this helps!

missy-ga

Search terms for answer and clarification included: [ "broadband
users" worldwide ] and [ "broadband users" worldwide total ]