Fixed broadband expansion, monetization: APAC market trends to monitor in 2026

S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan releases a forward-looking overview of the fixed broadband industry in the Asia-Pacific region, displaying the sector's foreseeable modest growth in the long term, with fiber maintaining its dominance across both developed and emerging markets.

Trend 1: Fixed broadband poses modest growth amid regional segmentation

While mature markets concentrate on speed-tier migration, developing markets continue to push for network upgrades and to scale growth through service bundles. The fragmented Asia-Pacific markets bring an overall fixed broadband market subscription of 708.0 million and a penetration rate of 57.2% in 2025. Household take-up lags despite high infrastructure coverage in many markets, indicating utilization is far from saturation. Meanwhile, revenues climbed to $83.6 billion, with an average revenue per user (ARPU) of $9.97 per month.

As the industry's growth is hinged on monetization — the dynamics of converting homes passed into paying lines and converting paying lines into higher-value tiers — we expect a moderate compound annual growth rate (CAGR) across the subscriber base, household penetration, revenues and ARPU by year 2031.

Trend 2: Deeper convergence is anticipated across broadband technologies

In the present fixed broadband landscape in the region, fiber portrays as the capacity anchor, fixed wireless access (FWA) and satellite as the reach-extenders, and DSL and copper as the shrinking platforms. As household demands grow (driven by multi-device usage, cloud, smart homes and upstream-heavy applications), customers favor fiber due to its sustainable delivery of multi‑gigabit access and low, consistent latency connections. In 2025, fiber accounted for about 86.8% of the region's broadband subscribers, according to Kagan's analysis.

We expect deeper convergence across broadband technologies in the region, where fiber acts as both access and backhaul spine, with FWA and satellite increasingly treated as managed access layers attached to the fiber spine. Meanwhile, copper lines will remain in locations where access issues persist, potentially raising operating expenses and fault costs.

Trend 3: Emerging markets accelerate expansion, developed markets accelerate densification

Emerging markets in the region continue the expansion through rapid FTTH footprint build, aggressive pricing and bundles, and selective substitution or augmentation with FWA, while developed markets concentrate on network scalability and upgrades by delivering mature fiber footprints via multi‑gig tiers, XGS‑PON, next‑gen PON, and in‑home QoE (quality of experience). As of 2025, emerging markets — the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia — had the strongest fixed broadband household growth year over year, displaying how low broadband adoption provided room for subscriber base expansion. On the flipside, developed markets — Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, New Zealand and South Korea — are estimated to have a healthy 2026-2031 subscription CAGR, reflecting the competitive positioning and balanced capex momentum of fixed connectivity, particularly fiber.

Trend 4: Fiber is king

As of year-end 2025, fiber maintained its dominance as the leading broadband platform in all of the 18 studied markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Top fiber broadband providers in the region have evolved beyond merely selling high-speed connectivity, placing a focus on enhancing customer experience. The strategy is seen as a key driver for sustained growth and an approach to monetizing fiber services, where mature markets leverage improved customer experience to stabilize ARPU and mitigate subscriber churn, while emerging markets use it to expedite the acquisition of new subscribers and establish long-term service value.

DSL and cable maintain a fair presence in a few APAC markets while fixed wireless access (FWA) and satellite, both considered niche platforms, have been operational for rapid coverage use and as competitive disruptors for challenging geographies and rural locations. FWA service is widely tracked and deployed across APAC markets as part of the 4G/5G network evolution. Meanwhile, satellite broadband, through LEO and GEO, is still in incremental coverage, aiming to move from niche connectivity to broader mobility operations. Although regionwide, FWA and satellite scalability are constricted by backhaul, cell-edge capacity, customer premise equipment (CPE) installation, congestion management, and realistic opportunities for the delivery of direct-to-device (D2D) and direct-to-consumer (D2C) services.

Trend 5: Mainland China ISPs maintain a lead position in the region

Mainland China maintains its lead position in the region in terms of both subscribers and revenue, accounting for 65.8% and 48.3% of the entire Asia-Pacific region, respectively, as of year-end 2025. The region's top fixed broadband operators are mostly from mainland China, with China Mobile Ltd. in the top spot, followed by China Telecom Corp. Ltd.

Trend 6: Monetization is up for steady growth while competition and regulation persist

Emerging markets India, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, and the Philippines experienced significant year-over-year revenue growth, driven by household connection growth. Meanwhile, mature markets are projected to maintain healthy broadband service earnings in the next five years.

At a regional scale, ARPU is expected to pick up slowly in the long term due to the rising uptake of premium services, including gigabit packages in maturing and advanced markets.

Despite intensifying competition and evolving regulatory frameworks across the Asia-Pacific, we expect fixed broadband monetization to continue to increase through our forecast period. Operators are leveraging ongoing fiber upgrades, tiered service strategies and bundled offerings to unlock new revenue streams — even as price pressure and wholesale access rules persist.

Trend 7: Affordability will remain a constraint in emerging markets

Based on the 2025 per capita gross national income at purchasing power parity, we calculate that fixed-broadband services are most affordable in Taiwan and Singapore, both of which had an affordability index of 0.3%. In contrast, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Myanmar and other small Asia-Pacific markets have the least affordable services.

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This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.