Broadband Outlook 2012
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Rural communities key to Europe’s superfast broadband target
Nearly one billion broadband subs expected by 2018
The number of broadband subscribers worldwide will increase by around 50 per cent over the next five years to reach 940 million by the end of 2018, with Asia-Pacific driving much of this growth according to new figures from UK research firm Point Topic.
BitTorrent traffic dropping sharply in US, as VOD wins favour
The amount of traffic generated in the US by BitTorrent, the file sharing internet protocol , has dropped significantly, according to a report from policy control company Sandvine.
Over the past six months BitTorrent accounted for 9.2 per cent of peak-period traffic, down from 11.3 per cent in 2012 and 17.2 per cent in 2011, the report said. Sandvine attributes the drop in the usage of the file sharing protocol to the increasing availability of subscriber-based, paid-for, on-demand content from applications such as Netflix. Indeed, online video service Netflix maintained a 29 per cent peak-period traffic share in the US, ahead of YouTube, which climbs to 15.4 per cent compared to 13.8 per cent in 2012.
EC’s super-fast broadband estimates challenged
Providing super-fast broadband to the whole of the European Union could be much less expensive than previously thought, according to UK research firm Point Topic, which estimates that the whole economic area could be served for €80bn – less than a third of the €270bn estimated by the European Commission in its Digital Agenda.











Calls for consolidation in the European mobile market grow louder by the week and four-operator markets look increasingly challenged. Now, those mobile operators that have already built scale seem to be suggesting that there is no option but to expand yet further through diversification.