CONNECT WITH US

Digitimes Research: China FTTx, mobile Internet-access user bases increase to 228 million, 941 million at end of 2016

Benson Wu, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei

The number of FTTx subscribers increased to 228 million and 3G/4G mobile broadband Internet-access subscribers grew to 941 million in China as of the end of 2016, accounting for 76.8% of all fixed-line broadband Internet-access subscribers, and 71.2% of all mobile communications respectively, Digitimes Research cited statistics by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as indicating.

MIIT aims at 300 million FTTx subscribers and 400 million fixed-line broadband Internet-access subscribers by 2020 and is likely to attain the goal earlier, Digitimes Research indicated.

The significant growth in the number of FTTx subscribers is because the China government began to implement the Broadband China Plan in August 2013, and China Mobile became the third licensee of fixed-line broadband Internet-access services at the end of that year. China Mobile has been rapidly setting up FTTx infrastructure and saw its market share for fixed-line broadband rise to 28.1% in 2016.

Despite progress in overall penetration of fixed-line broadband in China, the gap in the penetration rate in urban and rural areas has widened. The average penetration rate in urban areas increased from 35.9% in 2008 to 67.2% in 2016 while rural ones rose from 11.6% to 31.7%, raising the gap from 24.3pp to 35.5pp.

Content from this article was part of a complete Digitimes Research Chinese-language report that has not yet been translated into English. If you are interested in an English version of the report or wish to receive more information about the report, click here to contact us and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Digitimes Research also provides quarterly tracking services for market sectors such as China Smartphone, China Smartphone AP, Taiwan ICT and Taiwan FPD. Click here for more information about Digitimes Research Tracking services.