ITU: Broadband Uptake Grows as Price Drops

According to a new International Telecommunications Union report, communications technology demand and uptake are growing globally, driven in part by a steady decline in price.

The report predicts there will soon be as many mobile cellular subscriptions as people on the planet. It predicts that number of those subscriptions will surpass seven billion by early 2014. Asia now claims more than half of all those subscriptions. By the end of 2013, ITU predicts, overall global penetration will have topped 96%. The report looks at regions, though there are some individual country stats as well. The U.S. fixed wireless and wired broadband service is tops in the Americas in high-speed broadband subscriptions (which ITU defines as at least 10 Mbps downstream) at about 58%, but that puts it in 14th place globally, according to ITU.