South Korea has now lost its long-held position as the country with the highest broadband penetration, overtaken by the Netherlands , Denmark and Iceland . South Korean broadband lines increased by just over 3% in the 12 months from Q105-Q106. Compare that to growth of 27% in the US , 45.5% in China or 328% in India . But, and it's a quick and pretty big but, the number of FTTx lines in South Korea grew by 18% in a single quarter at the start of this year. It is likely that much of this growth is in the Fibre to the Kerb or Fibre to the Node segments where a LAN takes over for the last few metres and distributes the bandwidth to the houses/apartments. After all what would one family do with 1Gbyte of data - which is where fibre all the way is leading?

Some examples based on current estimates would be:
•        Hold over 8000 simultaneous (voice) phone conversations
•        Listen to 3500 CD quality music tracks at the same time
•        Download the entire Encyclopedia Britannica (2005 digital edition) in just over 30 seconds
•        Watch 200 DVD quality or 66 HDTV channels

Currently on the excessive side even for a family of four all with their own media stations, but maybe not so much in the longer term, particularly if the family want to use some of the bandwidth hungry applications on the horizon (immersive virtual reality, telepresence etc).

Japan, another broadband early adopter, also believes that fast won't be fast enough for long. Point Topic estimates they are closing in on 5.4mn FTTx lines, growing about 90% in the 12 months to end Q106 against 20% growth in overall broadband subscribers.

Then of course there is China . Increasing population concentration in the cities and on-going infrastructure installation are creating perfect conditions for FTTx growth.  Although only showing around 2.6mn net adds in the year to end Q106 (a mere 33% increase) Point Topic sees mounting evidence that the need for speed will mean more fibre in more places in 2006.
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