Evolution in Broadband Technology and Future of Wireless Broadband - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 225

respectively. In contrast, for Sweden, Switzerland,
Norway, Netherland and Denmark the penetration
velocities started to increase from the beginning
of this decade exceeding the rates of the other set
of 5 countries. For Sweden and Switzerland, we
observe an increasing trend in the velocity as of
2007. Same phenomenon is revealed in Figure 6
that displays the acceleration of penetration rates
for all 10 countries. Thus the Figures 4 - 6 clearly
show that for the time period 2002 - 2007, the rate
of growth of the penetration and its acceleration
declined for Korea, Taiwan, Iceland, Canada and
Hong Kong whereas for Sweden, Denmark, Neth-
erlands, Norway and Switzerland the momentum
for penetration increased.
The observed changes in velocities and ac-
celeration rates of BB penetration across various
countries could be influenced by political, social
or economic factors. Various demand and supply
side factors are playing important roles (Nandi &
Chakraborty, 2008, Papacharissi and Zaks, 2006)
in affecting these rates which can be influenced
both by government policies and by the eco-
nomic environment. The size of the country and
the urbanization structure also play important role

in achieving higher growth rate of penetration. It
is possible that lack of stimulus from demand and
supply side factors have slowed the growth rate
in countries such as Korea, Taiwan and Hong
Kong whereas positive stimulus from demand
and supply sides have encouraged further deploy-
ment of BB in the countries such as Denmark,
Sweden, Switzerland and some others. Other
possible reason behind the observed scenario
could be that countries like Korea, Taiwan and
Hong Kong who were pioneers in the deployment
of fixed BB are also pioneers in the deployment
of wireless BB.The demand for BB subscription
in these countries could be gradually declining
due to migration of users from fixed BB to wire-
less BB. This phenomenon will be discussed in
more detail in the next section where we focus
primarily on analyzing the deployment of wireless
broadband around the world.

Summary Statistics for Mobile
Broadband Access

Over the last few years, wireless BB is getting
deployed in many countries around the world.

Figure 4. Dynamics of total fixed BB subscription (velocity)