Broadband News

Four hundred and forty-five million people in the world have broadband subscriptions. More than two million people have fibre to their home in Europe. And seven million people are pirating online media in the UK - or should that be more like half that? Samknows takes a look at some of the numbers racing around the press at the moment.

It was the ever-eloquent Homer J. Simpson that once said: "People can come up with statistics to prove anything. Forfty percent of all people know that." Numbers are a form of journalistic shorthand - and a good way for the press to take notice and act on your press release. In short, they're everywhere - and right now there's a lot out there of interest to readers of this site.

Ofcom, through its Telecommunications Market Update Q1 2009, has been keeping us abreast of broadband developments in Britain:

•  The number of UK residential and small business broadband connections increased by 281k (1.6%) to 17.6 million during the quarter (up 8.4% year-on-year), with the majority of this growth being as a result of increasing numbers of LLU-based connections.


• There was little change in BT’s retail broadband market share which fell from 26.5% at the end of March 2008 to 26.4% at the end of March 2009.

And, thanks to the nice folk at Point Topic, we're able to put the UK in the context: it has the sixth most broadband connections in the world. From the second quarter of 2008 until the second quarter of 2009, the number of connection actually rose from 16,718,400  to 17,838,200. However, that sort of growth is nothing when compared to some other countries in the top five. In the same period, according to data from the Broadband Forum:

• China went from 75,768,350 to 93,549,000


• The USA went from 74,440,195 to 86,227,582


• Japan went from 29,584,700 to 31,085,500


• Germany went from 21,420,702 to 24,086,250


• France went from 16,601,286 to 18,324,300

In global terms, almost thirteen million broadband lines were added in the second quarter alone, making a total of four hundred and forty-five million connections across the world.  But that's not all the Broadband Forum can tell us - it can also update us on IPTV stats. "Europe continues to lead the IPTV success story with 13,631,074 subscribers, a 51 per cent growth over the twelve months leading up to July 2009," it reports. "In the second quarter 2009, there was a healthy six per cent growth in Western Europe – where France remains the 'champion' IPTV country with more than seven million subscribers – and 12 per cent in Eastern Europe, where new services in countries such as Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Russia are in demand."

The demand for IPTV is predictably leading to an increase in popularity of higher bandwidth broadband options - including those based around fibre optic cables. But when it comes to fibre, the UK doesn't even make it into the top ten in Europe, according to data from FTTH (fibre to the home). While two million homes around the continent have fibre connections, when we're talking about the percentage of homes that have them, it's Sweden that tops the list. Here's the top five:

• Sweden: 10.9% 


• Norway: 10.2%


• Slovenia: 8.9%


• Andorra: 6.6%


• Denmark: 5.7%

While the UK may be lagging behind in that particular race, when the mighty Andorra makes it into the top five it becomes obvious that there are certain factors - most obviously country size, population size and population density - that may win the day. And that, of course, is one of the problems with numbers: they may tell a story but they don't tell the whole story.

What's rapidly becoming a classic case study in this respect is one particular figure - the one that refers to how many Brits are guilty of making illegal downloads: seven million. While many a journalist has neither the time nor resources to fully investigate such a statistic, those working for BBC Radio 4 programme called More or Less do - and have done so in response to a letter from a certain "Paul in Nottinghamshire." What they found out was that, while the "seven million" number has been quoted in Government reports, it actually comes from elsewhere: research from the Jupiter Industry Record Losses Project. And guess who that was commissioned by? None other than the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) - the body that represents the UK's record companies.

What's more, it's emerged that the "seven million" figure has been arrived at via a fairly controversial calculation. First, while the Government itself says there are just under thirty-four million people online, the Record Losses Project decided it was more like forty million. Second, while a survey of 1,176 households found that around eleven percent of people are guilty of Internet piracy, to adjust for "under-reporting" the Record Losses Project rounded that up to around sixteen percent. And then the two larger figures were then multiplied together; if the smaller figures had been used, we'd be talking about just under three and a half million online pirates rather than seven million. Figures.