Global broadband subscribers pass 1.5bn, driven by satellite, FWA and FTTP: Q4 2024 update

Summary

This report provides an updated analysis of trends in global and regional broadband subscriptions, technology adoption, and the growth rates in major markets.

In Q4 2024, global fixed broadband connections reached 1.5 billion, with a quarterly growth of 0.91%, down from 1.44% in Q3 2024.  Broadband subscriptions[1] declined in 14 countries[2], up from 13 in Q3 2024. Some of these markets have high mobile subscriber penetration, others are experiencing economic headwinds or are already highly saturated. Some are still in the midst of conflict (Israel, Palestine, Sudan). Globally, the growth in Q4 2024 was significantly slower compared to the previous quarter.

Other key points:

• The highest growth in Q4 2024 came from the developing and least saturated markets.

• India was at the top of the largest 20 fixed broadband markets with a 5.27 % quarterly growth rate.

• The share of FTTH/B in the total fixed broadband subscriptions increased further and stood at 71.49%. Broadband connections based on other technologies saw their market shares shrink again, with an exception of satellite and fixed wireless access (FWA).

• Year-on-year, FTTH/B connections grew by 7.4%. Satellite and FWA saw an even higher annual growth (52.5% and 27.3% respectively), with the former mainly driven by Starlink.

• Among the largest twenty markets all except Italy saw fixed broadband subscriber growth in Q4 2024. The average growth in the 20 markets was 1.12%, compared to 1.25% in Q3 2024.

• The highest FTTH/B broadband subscriber growth rates in markets with at least 0.5m fibre connections were in Egypt, Venezuela, the UK, Greece and Algeria, all in double figures.

Global and regional trends in broadband subscriber growth

Figure 1. Trends in world broadband subscriber growth. Source – Point Topic.

In Q4 2024, global fixed broadband subscribers increased by 0.91%, slightly exceeding 1.5 billion. The growth rate was the second lowest in the last two years, but slightly higher than in the respective quarter of 2023 (Figure 1 and Table 1). However, the broader trend of the slowing down growth continues, as fixed broadband penetration rates increase, albeit there is a marked difference in growth among various regions and countries.

Table 1. Global broadband subscribers and quarterly growth rates. Source – Point Topic.

South and East Asia continues to claim the largest share of global fixed broadband subscribers, having increased it slightly in Q4 2024 to 50.99%. As the quarterly growth in China, the largest market of the region[3], was much slower (0.6% in Q4 2024, compared to 1.75% in Q3 2024), it caused the region’s share of fixed broadband subscriber net adds to drop from 68.17% in the previous quarter to 54.62% in Q4 2024 (Table 2 and Figure 2).

Latin America was the only other region that also saw its net adds share decline (from 13.11% to 8.79%), where Brazil, Argentina and Mexico recorded slower growth. North America has done particularly well (11.53% this quarter compared to 4.63% in Q3 2024), with both Canada and the US experiencing a healthy rise in broadband connections, not least those based on satellite and FWA. In terms of market shares, Middle East and Africa and South and East Asia saw their shares expand most but the changes were moderate (0.03% in both cases).

Table 2. Share of fixed broadband subscribers and trends in net adds  by region. Source – Point Topic.

Figure 2. Share of net adds of fixed broadband subscribers by region. Source – Point Topic.

Broadband penetration among population is one of the factors affecting growth rates. A striking example is Middle East and Africa, which is in the bottom right corner of the penetration – growth chart (Figure 3), signifying the lowest penetration (8.7%) and the highest growth rate (1.6%).

Asia Pacific, South and East Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe occupy the centre of the chart. With relatively low broadband penetration, they grew by 0.8%-1% in Q4 2024. There is still a lot of potential for additional broadband connections in these countries, though the broad availability of mobile broadband technologies will be hard to overcome, with 5G offering increasingly reliable connectivity.

Figure 3. Penetration and quarterly growth by region (Bubble size represents the size of the market). Source – Point Topic.

We saw the slowest growth of only 0.3% in Western Europe, with the region already boasting the highest broadband penetration at 41.7% of population. North America is an interesting case – despite its high penetration (39.5%), there is still potential for growth. This quarter, fixed broadband subscribers in this region increased by 1%, with migration from copper to fibre remaining an important trend, and satellite as well as fixed wireless gaining ground, sometimes at the expense of cable.

Country and technology trends in broadband subscriber growth

In Q4 2024, we registered the highest broadband subscriber growth rates mainly in the developing countries and least saturated broadband markets (Figure 4). In a number of countries in this category, the growth came from a very low base. At the same time, large markets of India, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Egypt also recorded healthy growth.

Figure 4. Top 20 markets by quarterly growth rate in fixed broadband subscribers. Source – Point Topic.

Looking at the largest twenty broadband markets, all except Italy saw fixed broadband subscribers grow in Q4 2024 (Table 3). Italy saw a churn of -2.3%, as the FTTH growth was not sufficient to offset the 0.6 million decline in copper broadband connections. At the other end of the spectrum, once again India recorded a 5.3% quarterly growth, confirming huge growth potential due to the low fixed broadband penetration and the fast growing economy.

In 13 of the twenty largest fixed broadband markets the growth in Q4 2024 was higher than in the previous quarter. The most marked slowdown took place in Brazil and Italy. In Brazil, the regulator reported a much more modest growth in FTTH connections, although this figure might be restated next quarter.

Table 3. Changes in quarterly growth in fixed broadband subscribers in the largest 20 markets. Source: Point Topic.

The average growth in the 20 markets was 1.12%, compared to 1.25% in Q3 2024.

Technology trends

Fibre continues to be the dominant broadband technology, and its market share has expanded further. Between Q3 2024 and Q4 2024, the share of FTTH/B in the total fixed broadband subscriptions went up by 0.28% and stood at 71.49%. Broadband connections based on cable, copper (ADSL) and FTTx technologies saw their market shares shrink further. Satellite and wireless broadband connections expanded their market shares to 0.44% and 2.33% respectively.

Table 4. Changes in broadband technology market shares. Source – Point Topic.

The share of FTTx (mainly VDSL) subscriptions stood at 6.3%, down from 6.44% recorded in the previous quarter[4]. VDSL subscriber numbers grew only in six countries, with Greece now being the largest VDSL market which is still growing, while elsewhere large numbers of VDSL subscribers migrated to other technologies.

To assess fibre expansion, we look at the growth of FTTH/B in markets with at least 0.5 million fibre broadband connections (Table 5). In Egypt, Venezuela, UK, Greece and Algeria, we recorded FTTH/B growth rates of more than 10%. Most of the countries in the top ten league have stayed there for several quarters but the UK is the new entrant this quarter. Sustained FTTH deployment by multiple operators in this country resulted in the growing adoption of fibre based broadband connections. In Q4 2024, 29% of all fixed broadband connections in the UK were FTTH/B based.

Table 5. Top 10 markets by FTTH/B growth rates (countries with at least 0.5m fibre broadband subscribers). Source: Point Topic.

Globally, high quarterly FTTH/B growth rates were spread around the world, with the less advanced economies dominating to some extent (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Quarterly growth in fibre broadband subscribers around the world. Source: Point Topic.

In terms of FTTH/B broadband net additions in Q4 2024, China continued to maintain a significant lead with 2.8 million, while India, the US and the UK added around 1 million each. See our complete dataset for full details.

In 12 months to Q4 2024, fixed broadband technologies diverged further. The number of copper lines saw another decline (-12.3%), while FTTH/B connections grew by 7.4%. In the face of competition from fibre, FWA and 5G, cable (HFC) broadband subscribers also declined by 0.3%, while FTTx dropped by 5.3% (Figure 6). In the US, Charter and Comcast, the largest cable broadband providers, are seeing growing churn in their customer bases, partly blaming competition from FWA. Large market players Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all offer fixed wireless broadband and are seeing healthy growth in FWA subscribers.

Meanwhile, global satellite broadband subscribers increased by 52.5%, mainly due to the growing Starlink customer base.

Figure 6. Annual growth in subscriber numbers by technology, Q4 2023 to Q4 2024. Source – Point Topic.

Figure 7 provides our estimated figures of Starlink subscribers in the largest 20 markets. As there is limited public availability of the official Starlink subscriber data at country level, our estimates are based on the service launch dates, the demographic and other characteristics of the markets as well as industry sources and Starlink announcements of global figures. The global figure of Starlink subscribers at the end of 2024 was 4.6 million, with the US being the largest market where over 2 million subscribers use Starlink services. Canada, Brazil, Australia and Mexico also in the top five, being large territories with vast remote areas where traditional broadband infrastructure is limited.

Having said that, Starlink faces challenges in Canada. Political tensions have led to the cancellation of significant contracts, including a CAD 100 million agreement with the province of Ontario, as part of broader retaliatory measures against US tariffs. Additionally, major Canadian telecoms operators such as Bell Canada are lobbying against potential subsidies for Starlink, arguing that its pricing model indicates it does not require financial support to operate in remote areas.​

Figure 7. Estimates of Starlink satellite broadband subscriber figures (Top 20 markets). Source: Point Topic.

Speaking of other technologies, wireless broadband (mainly FWA, 5G FWA and LTE fixed) connections also continued to grow – they went up by 27.3% year-on-year, not least due to dramatic growth in India and healthy increase in the US (+61% and +8.7% respectively). We expect this trend to persist due to demand for fast connectivity in remote and underserved areas where legacy copper networks are expensive to maintain, and fibre deployment is not logistically, nor economically feasible. Satellite and FWA can provide good enough speeds, with relatively few consumers actually needing full gigabit bandwidth offered by fibre networks.

Overall, our data continues to indicate a steady consumer shift towards full fibre, high speed satellite and fixed wireless platforms, whether due to their reliability, competitive prices or availability (FWA and satellite can be the only solutions available in some areas). Meanwhile, traditional technologies like copper and even cable (HFC) are experiencing a decline. Although the latter offers high bandwidth, it can be expensive. As consumers worldwide continue to be affected by inflation, this has an impact on overall fixed broadband take-up. For example, 63% of US adults paying for home broadband saw their prices increase. On average, they paid $195 more last year than they did the year before[5]. Similar trends in other markets will have an impact on fixed broadband subscriber growth.

You can access the data used in this report by subscribing to our Global Broadband Statistics service.

[1] Whenever we refer to ‘broadband’ in this report, we mean fixed broadband. Also, ‘subscriptions’ and ‘connections’ are used interchangeably.

[2] It is possible there will be restatements in the coming quarter/s and single period data should be viewed in that light. Decline in some markets can be due to changes in methodology used by national regulatory authorities.

[3] Although we use them in our reports, we cannot vouch for the country’s officially reported broadband subscriber figures which suggest household penetration well over 100%.

[4] Some of our FTTx subscriber figures include both FTTB/FTTH and VDSL, as it is not always possible to identify the technology split in some operators’ figures reported as ‘fibre’.

[5] A recent CNET survey