Broadband subscriber base in the region - covering 13 Asia-Pacific countries - reached 129.7 million in 2007 and estimates this to reach 321.8 million by end-2013, at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 19.9 percent (2008-2013). The total broadband revenues in Asia-Pacific stood at US$28.1 billion in 2007. This is projected to reach a market size of US$42 billion by end-2013, growing at CAGR of 7.1 percent (2008-2013).
Total number of broadband subscribers grew 19.2 percent in 2007 and household penetration rate stood at 15.2 percent. By 2013, the household broadband penetration rate is forecasted to hit 33.7 percent.
The top five Asia-Pac countries with the highest household broadband penetration rates in 2007 are South Korea (90.8 percent), Hong Kong (83.8 percent), Taiwan (76.8 percent), Singapore (73.1 percent), and Australia (63.2 percent). Japan has a 57.8 percent penetration rate, while the remaining seven markets have household broadband penetration rates of less than 50 percent. India and Indonesia registered the lowest penetration rates at 1.4 percent and 0.57 percent respectively.
“As fixed-line substitution and voice migration to mobile continues, broadband value-added services (VAS) become critical drivers for fixed-line service providers,” notes Frost & Sullivan senior industry analyst Yong Lih Khoo.
“Operators are as such aggressively promoting attractive bundled and discounted price plans, encouraging migration from narrowband, introducing local content and innovative services such as IPTV, as well as overall improving service levels and affordability,” he adds.
The various government nationwide broadband master plan initiatives, particularly in the more developed nations, are also providing the impetus for the deployment of wider network infrastructure and coverage, and the development of local broadband content and applications, thus driving broadband uptake.
In terms of broadband access technology, Khoo believes that a wide range of access technologies - FTTH (fibre-to-the-home), FTTN (fibre-to-the-node), FTTB (fibre-to-the-building), DSL (digital subscriber line), WiMAX and other wireless technologies - would continue to co-exist depending on the strategic outlook of the operators, existing infrastructure and price points in a given country.
He says, “FTTx in its various forms - FTTH, FTTB, FTTN - would play a significant role in the next three to four years due to its potential of providing greater bandwidth to the premise, compared to copper wires. Some countries like Hong Kong are already providing speeds up to 1Gbps, while other countries like Singapore are following suit.
“Deploying fibre as close to the home as possible enables operators to be future-ready for the bandwidth explosion that new services like multi-screen IPTV with recording and the concurrent high speed Internet needs,” Khoo adds.
“Although service providers are rolling-out FTTx, the profitability of new services like IPTV remains questionable as these deployments would typically have a long payback period,” Khoo says, adding that in a credit crunch environment, most operators are likely to be cautious before deploying full-fledged FTTH although it is a future-proof technology.
“Hence FTTN would still be a more preferred option for low- to medium-density geographies like Australia and Malaysia,” says Khoo.
