The number of broadband subscribers continues to grow worldwide, according to the World Broadband Statistics Report of Point Topic Ltd.

As of 2007, there are over 349.98 million subscribers, with 69 million people signing up for services last year.

Subscriber growth
By country, the United States has the highest number of subscribers, 72.9 million at the end of Q4. China comes in second with 66.5 million subscribers, up 5.4 percent from Q3.

This comes to 3.41 million new subscribers in Q4, giving China the most number of new subscribers for the quarter of that year.

As for the countries with the highest quarterly percentage growth rates—tallying only countries with 100,000 or more subscribers by end of Q4—Pakistan emerged on top with 35 percent growth.

Vietnam followed with almost 25 percent growth. Of these countries, India had the most number of new subscribers over the quarter, with 454,000 new broadband users.

In terms of technology, digital subscriber line (DSL) is the most prevalent with over 166 million subscribers.

Cable modem is second with over 59 million subscribers, and fiber-to -the-x (FTTx) is third with over 33 million subscribers. Point Topic, however, observes that technological preference varies by country.

DSL is the key technology in China, whereas in the U.S. cable modem users are more common, and FFTx ruled in Japan as of the end of Q4.