Broadband subs hit 400 million, 'Net bending under the weight

The Broadband Forum and research partner Point-Topic announced that there are now more than 400 million global broadband subscribers. That's a long way from the first measurement taken in 1998, when global broadband subscribers numbered barely more than than 57,000. Fiber-based broadband services now account for about 45 million subscribers, according to Point-Topic.

Meanwhile, a new bit of research from Nemertes Research renews the agency's concern, first raised late last year, that broadband user demand will out-strip Internet bandwidth availability in the next two to four years. This time around, Nemertes is especially concerned that the amount of investment required for network capacity to keep pace--between $42 billion to $55 billion in the U.S., and $137 billion globally--could be a difficult mark to meet amid global economic downturn. Unfortunately, we can't stuff bandwidth under our mattresses to save it for a rainy day.

For more:
- Here's the Broadband Forum press release [1]
- Here's the Nemertes press release [2]

Related articles
Global broadband subscribers hit 370 million this summer [3]
Nemertes last November first raised concerns about bandwidth availability [4]