The latest statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that fibre and fixed wireless access (FWA) have seen the strongest growth in fixed broadband technologies in three years.
Founded in 1961, OECD is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries. Its purpose is to stimulate economic progress and world trade.
Fibre subscriptions increased by 56%
According to the organisation’s latest statistics, fibre subscriptions increased by 56% between June 2020 and June 2023, while FWA subscriptions increased by 64%. The United States (252%), Estonia (153%), Norway (139%) and Spain (118%) led this FWA growth. This is in comparison to the decline in DSL (- 24%).
The OECD says that fibre, which has been the dominant technology since 2021, amounted to 41% of total fixed broadband subscriptions in June 2023. FWA still represents a more modest share of 3.7% of total fixed broadband subscriptions (in countries where data is available). DSL now represents a share of 22% of total broadband, while cable accounts for 30.5% of overall connections. Satellite, which grew 11% over the last three years, represents 0.7% of fixed broadband subscribers.
Nine OECD countries have more than 70% of fibre connections over total broadband
Nine OECD countries have more than 70% of fibre connections over total broadband, according to the latest figures, with Korea, Japan, Iceland, Spain leading the way with the highest fibre penetration rates of 89%, 86%, 85%, and 84%, respectively. The highest fibre growth rates are in Europe, with Austria and Belgium having growth rates of 75% and 73% over the last year, closely followed by Mexico with a growth in fibre of 68%. Two other Latin American countries are in the top seven: Costa Rica and Colombia with fibre growth rates of 42% and 34%, respectively.
Meanwhile, mobile data usage per subscription grew by 28% in one year, passing from 10.2GB to 13GB per-subscription per-month in OECD countries as of June 2023. The amount of data consumed in countries varied from 6 GB to 46 GB, with Latvia being the OECD leader. In addition, and despite an already high mobile broadband penetration in the OECD area, overall mobile subscriptions continued to grow by 4.6% over the last year, which totalled 1.8 billion as of June 2023, up from 1.74 billion a year earlier. Mobile broadband penetration is highest in Japan, Estonia, the United States and Finland, with subscriptions per-100 inhabitants at 200%, 192%, 183% and 161%, respectively.
