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ITU report finds APAC leads high-speed connections worldwide, but wide divide prevails

September 1, 2008 - A new report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for the Asia-Pacific region has found that the region leads worldwide in terms of high-speed Internet connectivity, with some countries recognised as world leaders in information and communication technologies (ICT), but a wide divide continues as access remains limited and predominantly low-speed in most of the region's poorer countries.

The ITU's Telecommunication and ICT Indicators Report for the Asia Pacific region was launched at the ITU Telecom Asia 2008 event, which got underway today in Thailand, and focuses on broadband connectivity as a vehicle to drive development and build a knowledge-based information society. The report finds evidence that ICTs and broadband uptake foster growth and development, but a question remains as to the optimal speed that should be targeted in view of limited resources.

The Asia-Pacific region is found to be the world's largest broadband market with a 39% share of the world's total subscribers at the end of last year, with subscriber numbers growing almost five-fold over the past five years from 27mn at the beginning of 2003 to 133mn at the start of this year. The region is also found to be home to almost half of the world's fixed telephone subscribers, passing 2bn lines at the start of 2008, as well as accounting for 42% of the world's Internet users.

The Republic of Korea is reported to lead the world in terms of broadband penetration by household, with four other APAC countries in the global top ten - Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao. Korea, Hong Kong and Japan also lead the world in terms of Fibre to the Home (FTTH) penetration.

While the region's high-income economies are "pushing the frontier" of broadband bandwidth to a point where applications have yet to catch up, many developing countries in APAC are bandwidth-starved according to the report, with the minimum advertised broadband speed in countries such as Japan and Korea higher than the maximum available speed in countries such as Cambodia, Tonga, Laos and Bangladesh.