China Doubles Global Broadband Subscriber Growth Rate

London, UK, September 6, 2016--According to the most recent data in the Q1 2016 report published by Point Topic, China now boasts over a quarter of a billion fixed broadband subscribers, having added 34 million in the last two quarters. Furthermore, China has contributed to the global FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) growth dramatically, more than doubling its FTTH subscriber figure in the last 12 months.

This unprecedented jump in the country’s broadband customer base appears to have been caused mainly by the recent dramatic expansion of its fixed broadband operations by China Mobile. The world’s largest mobile provider has become the new key broadband market player alongside China Telecom and China Unicom. The push for becoming a fully integrated fixed-mobile operator by China Mobile was made possible after it acquired the assets of TieTong which owns and operates a nationwide backbone network.  

The impact of this spike in the Chinese broadband subscriber figure was felt globally. As a result, the total fixed broadband customer base around the world has grown by more than 8% in nine months to the end of March 2016. This compares to less than 4% in the previous nine months. China is also a bellwether in the FTTH deployment and take up. It was to a large extent to blame for the fact that global FTTH connections nearly doubled between Q1 2015 and Q1 2016 while the number of copper lines fell by 16%.

China Telecom and China Unicom have also been investing heavily in the FTTH rollout. Nationwide, the number of homes passed by FTTH networks increased by 74.3% year-on-year to 446 million in 2015, according to Ao Li, deputy director of the Standard Institute of CATR (China Academy of Telecommunication Research), quoted by C114. 

A recent study indicates what boost such dramatic expansion in superfast broadband infrastructure and take up could provide for this Asian economy. According to the analysis by Adroit Economics in collaboration with Point Topic, The Fifth Sector and the University of Manchester, “the use of faster broadband by London’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) […] will enable them to generate £2bn additional sales within the first two years, 32,000 new jobs and to achieve just under £1bn cost savings.” Obviously, these will be even more dramatic in the case of China.

Oliver Johnson, CEO at Point Topic, says, “China is embracing the ultrafast era with open arms.  Such bold commitment is likely to significantly boost their competitiveness and productivity and the rest of the world will need to keep running just to keep up, at least in broadband terms.”

The full report and the dataset covering fixed broadband subscribers in more than 120 countries are available from Point Topic.