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Western Europe IPTV Subscribers Top Ten Million

IPTV market achieves 45% year on year growth – including 10% in last quarter – despite economic downturn

25 March 2009 – The Broadband Forum today announced the latest IPTV and broadband statistics, with the Western Europe, Africa and Middle East regions showing strong IPTV growth of 45 per cent throughout 2008. The report, prepared for the Forum by industry analysts Point Topic (GBS database at http://point-topic.com/home/gbs/), showed France as the largest IPTV market in the Western European region, with over half of the 10.2 million subscribers.

The IPTV figures – announced by the Broadband Forum at today’s opening day of IPTV World Forum in London – come at the same time as world broadband statistics for 2008 show a 62.6 million broadband line growth to 410.9 million lines. While growth was slower later in the year generally, several countries showed improved performance than that of the third quarter of 2008, including France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Singapore and The Philippines.

Global IPTV subscriber totals have now reached 21.7 million, which is an increase of 63 per cent on the end of 2007 figures.

IPTV subscribers per region

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic (www.point-topic.com)

“During 2008, IPTV operators showed that TV over IP could be deployed on a large scale. Western Europe remains the largest single region for IPTV,” said John Bonsell, a Senior Analyst with Point Topic.  "As expected, due to the global economic situation, broadband growth slowed, however all countries experienced overall growth during the last year."

Top ten broadband countries

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic (www.point-topic.com)

Regionally, over the last quarter, Latin America (7.55 per cent), Eastern Europe (6.22 per cent) and Middle East and Africa (4.76 per cent) were the best percentage growth performers, although all regions continued to report growth.

Region broadband view and growth

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic (www.point-topic.com)

In terms of technology, DSL continues to be the most popular broadband access technology, although fibre has grown twice as fast as either cable or DSL in the 12 months to Q4 2008. This should continue, given the number of new implementations and consumer and business demand for higher speeds. Value added services such as IPTV are also proving to be strong drivers for FTTx uptake and have driven this technology through the 50 million mark worldwide.

“This report shows that despite the economic situation the world is facing, the demand for both broadband and IPTV continues to expand,” said George Dobrowski, Chairman and President of the Broadband Forum.

“The Forum continues to drive broadband innovation, and with the recent release of BroadbandSuite 3.0, which provides new IPTV management and fibre integration tools, we continue to ensure that the industry has all the tools and specifications it needs to optimise networks and to capture the full potential of broadband worldwide.”

For further information about the Broadband Forum and BroadbandSuite 3.0 mentioned here, visit www.broadband-forum.org.

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For further information please contact Chrissie Walker or Brian Dolby on +44 (0) 115 948 6901 or by email to chrissie@bcspr.co.uk or brian@bcspr.co.uk.

About the Broadband Forum
The Broadband Forum mission is to develop the full potential of broadband.  Focused on home-to-core network and management solutions, our standards empower providers to achieve more with their broadband deployment.  Established in 1994 as the ADSL Forum and later as the DSL Forum, the Broadband Forum has seen its work over the past 15 years evolve from addressing physical layer ADSL transport specifications to advanced transport and management specifications for all forms of broadband.  The Broadband Forum’s formal BroadbandSuite™ Release Program and all technical reports are publicly available at www.broadband-forum.org.

Image Technology market share Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic (www.point-topic.com)