APAC gigabit broadband migration dawdles despite broadband speed growth

More than 80% of Asia-Pacific broadband users subscribe to broadband plans below 1 Gbps, despite gradual user migration to gigabit plans in recent years.

By year-end 2022, 18.2% of total broadband users had broadband plans with download speeds of 1 Gbps or above, while more than 80% stayed below 1 Gbps, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan data. The majority of Asia-Pacific is not ready for metaverse applications in households, which need a bandwidth of at least 1 Gbps and ideally 5 Gbps to get a fully immersive experience, according to data from ISP Race Communication.

However, more Asia-Pacific broadband users adopted higher-speed plans over the past years. Some 87% of broadband users subscribed to packages at a download speed of 100 Mbps or above in 2022. That compares to about 75% of broadband users subscribing to 100-Mbps-or-above plans by the end of 2020. The 15 markets in Asia-Pacific that we researched had 592.2 million broadband users as of the end of 2022.

Users in different markets migrated to gigabit speeds at different paces. Singapore headed Asia-Pacific, with about 88% of broadband users taking up gigabit packages at the end of 2022. Thailand and Hong Kong followed, with more than 60% of broadband users subscribing to 1-Gbps-and-above plans. However, no homes in Pakistan, Indonesia and New Zealand subscribed to gigabit choices, while three remaining markets out of a total of 15 saw less than 1% of users adopting gigabit speeds.

A growing percentage of gigabit subscribers resulted in faster average fixed-broadband monthly download speeds in the region. Based on speed tests by Ookla, Hong Kong led Asia-Pacific markets with the fastest broadband download speed at 265.17 Mbps in September 2023, while Singapore followed with an average speed of 259.11 Mbps. Thailand came third with an average download speed of 219.10 Mbps. Six out of 15 markets had monthly average download speeds below 100 Mbps in September, while Indonesia and Pakistan's speeds were below 30 Mbps. The monthly average download speed in Asia-Pacific grew 15% over the year to 130.39 Mbps in September 2023.

In addition, Kagan identified the following trends based on a correlation analysis.

• Broadband infrastructure readiness and per capita national income are two major factors impacting the migration to gigabit speed. 
• Higher gross national income (GNI) correlates with higher broadband speed package availability and a larger share of users migrating to gigabit plans. 
• Both trends suggest that entry-level fiber plans continue to drive the adoption of fiber services in this region.

Markets in Asia-Pacific displayed different growth rates of average download speeds over the past year along with different choices among broadband speeds, which we will discuss in detail in the second part of this series.

^{Global Multichannel is a regular feature from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan.
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.}