Over the past year, the number of broadband subscribers in the OECD increased 33% from 136 million in June 2005 to 181 million in June 2006.

Highlights from the recently published OECD report are:

Northern European countries have continued their advance with high broadband penetration rates. In June 2006, six countries (Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Korea, Switzerland and Finland) led the OECD in broadband penetration, each with at least 25 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

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Denmark now leads the OECD with a broadband penetration rate of 29.3 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

The strongest per-capita subscriber growth comes from Denmark, Australia, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Luxembourg, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Each country added more than 6 subscribers per 100 inhabitants during the past year.

Fibre to the home is becoming increasingly important for broadband access, particularly in countries with high broadband penetration. In Denmark, Danish power companies are rolling out fibre to consumers as they work to bury overhead power lines. Municipal broadband projects are also expanding in many northern European countries and throughout the OECD. Telecommunciation operators in several OECD countries have also begun or announced large fibre-to-the-premises rollouts.

Japan leads the OECD in fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) with 6.3 million fibre subscribers in June 2006. Fibre subscribers alone in Japan outnumber total broadband subscribers in 22 of the 30 OECD countries.

The total number of ADSL subscriptions in Korea and Japan have continued to decline as more users upgrade to fibre-based connections.

DSL continues to be the leading platform in 28 OECD countries. Cable modem subscribers outnumber DSL in Canada and the United States.

Statistics on all the OECD countries can be found at www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband