164 Million Broadband Subscribers Worldwide

prostoalex writes "164 million people on this planet have a broadband connection, ZDNet reports, with 52 million broadband lines sold between March 2004 and March 2005. USA, China, UK, Japan and France currently lead the world in number of broadband hookups available. Poland was the first Eastern European country to join the 'million broadband lines' club."

Comments

We need to focus on internet penetration

[Bad to the Ben]

not broadband penetration. Broadband technology may matter to us nerds, but half the population of the UK doesn't use the net. I imagine many other countries are the same. These people need to get on the net by any means necessary, so a nice cheap dialup connection is a very good idea, even if it is slow. Once they get used to the idea, then perhaps they'll move up to broadband.

It's important for society in the long run to encourage technological laggards to get connected. Increasing the speed of already connected users is great, but is less significant.