Sri Lanka among top 10 broadband countries

Sri Lanka is among the top 10 broadband countries in terms of growth in 2013 by Broadband Forum, a non-profit telecom industry consortium dedicated to developing broadband network specifications.

Members of the Broadband Forum include telecommunications networking and service provider companies (non-mobile), broadband device and equipment vendors, consultants and independent testing labs (ITLs).

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) recently launched the country's first fiber-to-thehome (FTTH) broadband services covering major markets.

According to the year-end worldwide statistics published, 40 million new broadband subscribers were added in 2013, taking total broadband lines to 678.6 million.

Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh said: “These figures for 2013 give an extremely interesting picture both regionally and in terms of the changes in technology choices as some markets reach saturation and others start their digital journey. They are a great illustration of the ‘second age of broadband access,' with existing customers demanding more bandwidth and operators introducing new technologies.”

Copper-based technologies (DSL, ADSL and ADSL2plus) continue to be dominant, although fiber-based technologies (which include VDSL and VDSL2) are taking a firmer grip and – with growth rates of 17.6% overall.

Meanwhile IPTV is nearing the 100 million subscriber threshold with 21% growth in 2013 and 17 million new subscribers taking the total to 96 million at year end 2013. 14.1% of fixed broadband subscribers also subscribed to an IPTV service, making this an important driver of continuing growth in the demand for high speed broadband.

Regionally the best performance was seen in Asia, and Eastern Europe, and a surge in demand in Russia.