2002 was a bumper year for broadband in Europe as the number of punters hooking up to high-speed Net access more than doubled to 13.4 million and access revenues topped $4bn.

The increasing availability of broadband services, greater customer choice, more affordable packages, and increasing Internet usage were all cited as factors key to the rise in take-up of broadband.

But as broadband becomes more mass market, it seems ISPs will have to do more to make themselves stand out from the crowd.

Said IDC analyst Jan Hein Bakkers: "As the market is maturing, an increasing number of operators will have to differentiate their product portfolios, to appeal to as wide an audience as possible."

This will have to be done against the backdrop of incumbent telcos continuing to play a major role in the BB landscape - not only as the provider of wholesale DSL network connections, but also as retail ISPs.

Elsewhere, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reported yesterday that the number of high speed connections in the US more than doubled last year to just under 20 million lines.

However, it noted that growth slowed in the second half of the year from 27 per cent in H1 to 23 per cent in H2. ®