If there was ever a notion that user demand for better broadband access would stagnate or decrease, subscriber data prepared by industry analyst Point Topic for trade group the Broadband Forum puts those thoughts to rest.

According to The Broadband Forum, the number of broadband subscribers around the world grew almost 17 percent from 381 million to 445 million over the past year. Individually, China leads all nations with 93.6 million subscribers, followed by the U.S. with 86.2 million. Japan, Germany and France follow with 31 million, 24 million and 18.3 million, respectively. Both China and the U.S. demonstrated the largest increase with China’s subscriber base growing by 17.7 million and the U.S. showing agrowth of 11.8 million. The report also found many subscribers are using DSL connections to log onto the Internet as it holds a 64 percent market share among connection types globally. While the Knight Center of Digital Excellence is glad to see the adoption of broadband – we’d like to see more robust connections than DSL provides. This is critical to support tomorrow’s applications.

The report also touched on significant growth in worldwide IPTV subscriptions. Latin America and Eastern Europe were the fastest-growing IPTV-subscriber regions over the past 12 months, with the amount of subscribers increasing by 270 percent and 86 percent, respectively. However, in terms of sheer numbers, Europe has emerged as the hub of IPTV activity, registering 13.6 million users with France alone contributing more than 7 million subscribers to that total. Overall, North America claims 5 million users, which represents nearly 20 percent of IPTV penetration worldwide.

At the Knight Center, we feel these numbers demonstrate worldwide demand for better broadband services is as strong as ever – and showing no sign of slowing down. Naturally, the types of numbers cited are always going to be a little skewed towards nations with the largest populations, but they also show a serious commitment by nations lagging behind in terms of broadband technology to try and catch up with world broadband leaders such as South Korea.

This type of growth also shows that broadband is truly emerging as the new platform for technology innovation on a global scale. For the U.S. to remain relevant in an ever-evolving global economy, it will need to make broadband development a priority.