Mexico is likely to displace India from its tenth positio in the broadband market during the first half of 2014, as it moves up league tables. While India maintained its previous year’s position, China remained at the top of the table in 2013 with more than 192 million subscribers as of December 31. China added more than three million new subscribers in the fourth quarter alone, according to a report by Broadband Forum. However, Mexico’s position was not revealed. The forum added that there was only one change in the table of top 10 countries during the year, with Russian Federation passed France to take up fifth place. “Both Russia and Brazil are likely to continue to move up the league table,” it said, adding India had 15.5 million broadband users as of fourth-quarter end.
The year witnessed the addition of 40 million new subscribers, taking the total broadband lines to 678.6 million across the globe. Digital subscriber lines (DSL) is still the predominant technology used, but fibre continues to outpace all access types in new deployments. Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) is nearing the 100-million subscriber threshold with 21 per cent growth in 2013 and 17 million new subscribers taking the total to 96 million at year-end 2013.