Evolution in Broadband Technology and Future of Wireless Broadband - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 220

activities. BB technology facilitates such knowl-
edge transfer across the globe and generates spill-
over effects 11 . Combined view of all these findings
reflects the potential role of BB technology as a
catalyst for higher growth and development in
the information age.

benefits from BB technology, countries around the
world are trying to increase the BB diffusion rate.
In recent years, we have observed a significant
growth in the fixed BB penetration for several
countries. As a result of, the accelerated growth
in the use of mobile phone devices in recent years
and the introduction of new wireless devices that
allow users to access Internet, there is increased
opportunity for using Broadband Wireless Access
(BWA. This BWA will allow end users to access
Internet easily from anywhere and at anytime. Re-
alizing this emerging need and potential benefits,
several countries are already putting efforts in the
deployment of BWA networks. In the next section,
we will focus primarily on analyzing the growth
and technological composition of fixed BB access
network in various countries and in the following
section, we will focus on analyzing the current
and future trends in use of mobile BB technology.

DATA

This study primarily uses the data reported in the
ITU the Telecommunications Indicator database,
released in June of 2009 (ITU 2009). This database
contains time series data (up to 2008) for various
telecommunications indicators which includes
data for fixed as well as mobile BB subscribers
and covers data for 217 countries around the
world. Time series of subscription data for vari-
ous BB services for the period of 1998 to 2008
are used in this study. In addition, time series
data for traditional mainline subscriptions and
wireless subscriptions are used for the period
of 1980-2008. However, due to missing data
for many countries, appropriate sections of the
available time series data are used for analyzing
various topics addressed in this chapter. Defini-
tions (ITU 2009) of various telecommunications
indicators used in this analysis are summarized
in Appendix-A. We also obtained additional data
from the official websites of ITU, OECD and FCC
to complement the data available in ITU reported
database (ITU 2009).
In the following two sections, we analyze these
data to study the trend in the growth for various
BB technologies across different countries.

Summary Statistics for
Fixed Broadband

Use of Internet services have been gaining momen-
tum since the early part of 1990s. Based on ITU's
data (2009); the number of Internet users around
the world reached a total of 1.40 billion by the end
of 2007, about 20.92% of the world population.
Increased demand for Internet use together with
expected benefits from high speed Internet con-
nections have induced the rapid deployment of BB
access network around the world. As reported by
ITU, the total number of fixed line BB subscribers
reached 349.2 million by the end of 2007 account-
ing for 5.22% of world population which is about
73.56% of the world Internet subscribers. As per
ITU's definition, a fixed BB Internet subscriber
refers to a subscriber who pays for high-speed ac-
cess to the public Internet (a TCP/IP connection),
at speeds equal to, or greater than, 256 kbit/s, in
one or both directions. Based on this definition,
the estimate for global fixed line BB subscribers
in 2008 is expected to be at 406 million 12 . The

BROADBAND DIFFUSION

Together with innovations of mobile phone and
Internet connection, the broadband (BB) technol-
ogy has offered a major step forward towards
world wide access to information and its associ-
ated spillover benefits. Based on the prospective