China floors pedal in DSL race

Take-up of DSL in China is faster than any other country, according to the latest analysis from Point Topic.

With around two million DSL lines, China is now the fifth largest country behind South Korea, the US, Japan and Germany. Analysts believe at its current growth rate China is likely to become the biggest broadband country in the next couple of years.

This supports a report published in the summer by the Yankee Group, which said that China had "huge potential" and predicted that it would have more than 19m broadband users by 2006. Elsewhere, Point Topic reported that there were 30.6m DSL lines worldwide at the end of September, a growth of almost 20 per cent over the quarter.

Although, South Korea still has more DSL lines than any other country, analysts point out that the US is catching up fast. And Point Topic expects the US to leapfrog South Korea by the end of the year to become the world's leading DSL nation.

However, the UK is still a DSL laggard. With 419,000 DSL lines at the end of September, it was ranked 13th in absolute numbers and 24th in DSL lines per 100 population, said the report. ®

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