Broadband Britain - a third world country?

While take-up of broadband in Britain is making slow but steady progress, some Asia Pacific countries are storming ahead on ADSL adoption.

Research out today from the Office of National Statistics shows that while the number of UK broadband subscribers has risen by 170 per cent over the previous year and around six per cent over the last month, the amount of users accessing the web via broadband still makes up just 16.8 per cent of total subscriptions.

It's a sharp contrast to the picture in some Asian countries, where internet access via broadband has become the norm – it's currently running at around 69 per cent in South Korea, according to figures from Ovum.

The comparatively swift take-up of broadband technology in countries such as South Korea is a result of both cultural and administrative factors, according to Mike Philpott, analyst at Ovum, who said a craze for online gaming and a successful government initiative are the reasons for Korea's broadband success.

However, Ovum's figures show that the UK broadband experience will potentially catch the Asian situation, with take-up in both Britain and Japan being roughly parallel by 2009.

Renee Gamble, analyst at IDC, said in a statement that broadband is increasingly becoming the standard means of internet access in countries such as Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, but for other, less internet-enabled countries, it's an all too recognisable picture.

She said: "In developing markets such as China, India, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand…broadband services remain too expensive for the majority of internet users, and often are simply not available outside major residential cities and towns."

So far, so familiar. But IDC expects broadband subscribers in Singapore alone to grow substantially in the coming years, with subscribers making up almost half of Singapore's total web users by 2007.

With dial-up subscriptions falling, Britain's e-commerce minister, Stephen Timms, pledged in May that 90 per cent of the UK population will have access to broadband by 2006 - it's a goal that Philpott thinks is "a little bit aggressive, but not totally out-there".

While the government's enthusiasm for high-speed web access is well-publicised, the next boom area in broadband adoption could well be China, Philpott believes.

"China is a quickly growing market and, because it's massive, there are enough people who will be able to afford broadband. As markets and services come online, China won't repeat the European experience of years ago – rather than users switching from narrowband, there'll be a high proportion of people experiencing the internet for the first time using broadband."