Broadband subscriptions in the Asia-Pacific region will grow by more than 31 percent this year to 171 million from 129.7 million in 2007, says a new Frost & Sullivan study. But the more startling-and promising metric for the telecom industry-is that those numbers still represent a household penetration of just 19.7 percent.

Extrapolating an expected 19.9 percent compound annual growth, F&S says that by 2013 some 321.8 million subscribers-a household penetration of 33.7 percent-should be hooked up to broadband in the 13 countries that make up the region with revenues expected to grow to $42 billion by the end of 2013 from $28.1 billion in 2007.

The study said the demand will be driven by the growing popularity of video-on-demand, multi-player online games, video content sharing and social networking services such as YouTube and Facebook, as well as the aggressive push by operators to offer innovative bundled triple- and quadruple-play services.

For more:
- See the Frost & Sullivan release [1]

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