US broadband adoption is trailing behind some countries in terms of penetration with France, urban Brazil and the UK growing by 59%, 50% and 45% respectively between the end of 2003 and 2004, according to recent research from US analysts eMarketer.
The percentage of broadband users, as a percentage of all internet users, is estimated by market research consultancy Ipsos-Insight to be at almost 60%, this is higher than eMarketers prediction of 50.8%.
In France, urban Brazil, the UK and the rest of the global market, digital subscriber lines (DSL) remain the dominant type of broadband provider, while in the US cable is still the leader.
DSL operators in the US upped their subscriber base by 4.2 million in 2004, an increase of 43% from 2003, However, this was not enough to catch up with the cable servers, who expanded their base by 4.4 million in the same period, according to the Leichtman Research Group.
Leichtman reports that there were 19.9 million cable subscribers at the end of 2004 compared to just 13.3 million DSL subscribers.
These numbers corroborate the latest figures from eMarketer, which show that cable households account for around 60% of all broadband homes in the US, with asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSL) comprising 37.6% and other technologies accounting for 2.6% of connections.
Despite not gaining more subscribers than cable in 2004, eMarketer reports that DSL is still growing faster and if the trend continues, the gap between the two providers is predicted to narrow significantly by 2008.
eMarketer estimates that ADSL will grow at a compound annual rate of 22.7%, compared to only 14.8% for cable, between 2004 and 2008.
Previous predictions from eMarketer estimated that broadband adoption in the US will reach nearly 70 billion households by 2008, with penetration increasing from 23.1% in 2003 to 56.3% in 2008 (see US Broadband Penetration To Reach 70 Billion By 2008).
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