A new survey published today reveals that more Europeans than Americans possessed a broadband Internet connection in the first quarter of 2005, with hi-tech South Korea in danger of losing its global pole position.
The Asia Pacific region – home to most of the world’s population – continues to be the world’s biggest broadband market, notching up 61 million subscribers and a 39 percent share of the global broadband market.
The research by the Anglo-Dutch research group TelecomPaper placed Europe in second place with 47.95 million broadband subscribers, edging past America with 47.53 million.
“Europe has outrun the Americas for the first time in history and became the second largest broadband market in the world,” TelecomPaper noted.
The addition of broadband to European homes was also greater than Asia and America, growing around twice as fast.
Leading the European charge were countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark whose broadband connectivity now only trails South Korea by a smidgen.
South Korea currently boasts 23.92 broadband connections per 100 inhabitants, which is calculated to give over 50 percent of the population fast internet access when connection-sharing is taken into account.
Growth in South Korea has almost come to standstill, with new connections only up 1.45 percent from the same period last year.
In the Netherlands and Denmark growth was explosive, with penetration reaching 21.1 percent, up from 13.9 and 15.8 percent respectively.
“Given the slow growth of South Korea, we expect that the top position, now held by South Korea, will change hands this year,” observed TelecomPaper director Ed Achterberg.
With virtual telecoms operators gaining access to the incumbent operator’s networks via European unbundling regulations, consumers have been able to take advantage from the fierce competition among telecoms’ operators and cable TV companies.
European telecommunications commissioner Viviane Reding stated that she wanted more than half of all Europeans to have high-speed Internet access by 2010, bringing it up from an average 8.5 percent in 2004.
Five out the world’s top 10 broadband nations are European, with Hong Kong at number four and Canada at five. Switzerland, Israel, Taiwan, Norway and Sweden are all up in the top ten, boasting at least 16.9 percent fast Internet connections per 100 citizens.
NTL’s claim that 300K broadband offer was “more than 5 times faster than standard 56K dial-up internet” has been happy-slapped down by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), who condemned it as being in breach of TV Advertising Standards Code. 
The telecoms giant insisted that it was standard industry practice to refer to the speed of broadband only in terms of download speed and, to back up their case, readily snitched on a host of competitors making similar claims. 
Bulldog Communications, the Internet and telecom group owned by Cable & Wireless, is rolling up its sleeves and shouting “Oy! Let’s be ‘aving you!” at its rivals as it doubles the speed of its broadband offering to a super-swifty 8 megabits-per-second from 4 megabits, and spread it across the UK. 
“Eight meg from Bulldog, with no download caps, gives customers the freedom to use the Internet as they wish,” he growled before retiring to his executive kennel. 
Research from BT shows that the number of users connecting to the Internet via broadband has overtaken dial-up subscriptions for the first time, with 7.4 million broadband customers (including cable) now online. 
High speed connections are also good news to those selling goods and services online, with an explosive growth in the consumer market for buying media online, such as films, music and television. 
Two million cable customers now enjoy broadband connectivity through NTL and Telewest. 
Cardiff vicar Reverend Kimber is hoping that by introducing wireless broadband access from the pews of his city centre church, more people will be encouraged to join his flock at St John’s Church. 
After Kimber approached BT, the company agreed to fill in the gap in Cardiff’s wireless broadband network and fitted the church with its own Openzone node, providing access to surfers sitting in the corner of the north aisle at St John’s. 
Natalie Mouyal of 
Generally, countries have tended mix the two strategies. Viewers have benefited from both an increase in the number of television service programmes available, as well as interactive television services. Yet, this combination has not always allowed for an impressive take-off of MHP based interactive services. In the case of Finland, consumers could choose between a zapper set-top box that allows them to access more television service programmes or an MHP-enabled set-top box that allows them to access both the increased number of television services programmes as well as the interactive services. However, MHP-enabled set-top boxes make up only 5% of all set-top boxes currently purchased. 
It has been assumed that many consumers will invariably prefer the cheaper zapper set-top box to a more expensive MHP-enabled set-top box. However, this reasoning disregards the type of interactive services offered. For example, should viewers find interactive services compelling and easy to use, they may be willing to spend the extra money necessary for an interactive set-top box. Thus, it would seem that consumer education is key to the successful roll-out of interactive services. 
Xbox 360, Microsoft’s successor to their popular Xbox gaming console, will be “unleashed” tonight at a celebrity-packed launch broadcast on MTV, which shows at 8pm in the UK. It was launched on US MTV last night. 
The Xbox will ship with a 12X dual-layer DVD-ROM drive – supporting progressive-scan DVD movies and a host of DVD and CD formats – three USB 2.0 ports, two memory unit slots and support for four wireless game controllers. 
“Xbox 360 marks the beginning of a renaissance in video games,” whooped Don Mattrick, president of Worldwide Studios for Electronic Arts. “The unbelievable Xbox 360 games in development at Electronic Arts will accelerate the industry’s mission to make video games the pre-eminent form of all entertainment.” 
Naturally, gamers love to customise their experience, so there’s a camera option to let vain players add their mugshots into games or even see their friends onscreen as they frag them to an inch of their worthless lives. 
Xbox 360 players can also access recorded TV and digital movies, music, video and photos stored on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005-based PCs through any Xbox 360 system in the house. 
Telewest Broadband today announced plans to transform its TV service, giving consumers greater access and control over additional digital programmes. 
There will also be a mix of free and subscription services including popular TV series, music videos and niche content. 
Eric Tveter, president and chief operating officer at Telewest sunk deeper into his deluxe executive chair and glossed: “We are transforming TV as we know it by giving consumers both a superb choice of programmes and the flexibility to watch them whenever they want. We don’t ever want to hear our customers say there’s nothing on the box or that they have missed their favourite programme.” 
NTL Broadcast and O2 have revealed the first batch of channels to be part of their forthcoming mobile TV trial in the Oxford area, announcing an initial 16 channels including Cartoon Network, CNN, Discovery Channel, Sky Sports News and Sky Travel. 
To support the trial, NTL Broadcast is building a new broadcast network of eight DVB-H transmitters to cover 120 square km around Oxford that will enable the lucky participants to receive digital television on the move. To enable a commercial service to be launched in the UK, Ofcom will need to license spectrum and O2 is already lobbying the UK regulator to bring forward plans to distribute radio frequencies for mobile TV services. 
In Austria, a DTT trial with MHP-based interactive services provided 150 households in Graz with access to an interactive television service called !TV4 using the telephone connection for the return channel. Using their television remote control, viewers could retrieve information services and vote. Given the success of the trial, it is likely that MHP-based interactive services will be launched alongside DTT services. 
Of course MHP is not the only interactive television service system in the market. Proprietary systems such as MediaHighway and OpenTV have been installed in a large number of set-top boxes, often for cable and satellite platforms. In the United Kingdom, the MHEG standard is widely used on the terrestrial platform. As a result of the various products and services in the market, the DVB Project has been working on the development of the Portable Content Format (PCF) to deliver a wide range of interactive television services to multiple platforms with a minimum of re-authoring. It has significant interest for operators who wish to migrate towards MHP by allowing them to manage simultaneously a mixed population of devices.