Sri Lanka has been rated among the top 10 broadband countries in terms of growth in 2013 by Broadband Forum, a leading non-profit telecom industry consortium dedicated to developing broadband network specifications.

Members of the Broadband Forum include telecommunications networking and service provider companies (non-mobile), broadband device and equipment vendors, consultants and independent testing labs (ITLs).

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) recently announced that it has launched the country’s first fiber-to-thehome (FTTH) broadband services covering major markets, greatly enhancing the broadband footprint in Sri Lanka.

According to the year-end worldwide statistics published by Braodband Forum, 40 million new broadband subscribers were added in 2013, taking total broadband lines to 678.6 million.

Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh said: “These figures for 2013 give an extremely interesting picture both regionally and in terms of the changes in technology choices as some markets reach saturation and others start their digital journey. They are a great illustration of the ‘second age of broadband access,’ with existing customers demanding more bandwidth and operators introducing new technologies.”

The figures show that copper-based technologies (DSL, ADSL and ADSL2plus) continue to be dominant, although fiber-based technologies (which include VDSL and VDSL2) are taking a firmer grip and – with growth rates of 17.6 percent overall.

Meanwhile IPTV is nearing the 100 million subscriber threshold with 21 percent growth in 2013 and 17 million new subscribers taking the total to 96 million at year end 2013. At the end of 2013, 14.1 percent of fixed broadband subscribers also subscribed to an IPTV service, making this an important driver of continuing growth in the demand for high speed broadband.

Regionally the best performance towards the end of the year was seen in Asian markets and Eastern Europe, driven by a significant surge in demand in Russia.