Eastern Europe saw the highest broadband growth in the third quarter of 2006, new research revealed today.

According to the latest report from Point Topic's quarterly World Broadband Statistics, Eastern Europe saw a " remarkable" 12.7 per cent growth rate in the third quarter, increasing the region's market share from 2.6 to 3.5 per cent over the year.
Coming second in the research firm's ranking was the Middle East & Africa region (MEA), with quarterly growth of 11.9 per cent.

"With a relatively unsaturated market, MEA is one of the fastest growing regions," said Point Topic analyst Vince Chook. "The area had annual growth of 67.1 per cent between Q3 2005 and Q3 2006."

Other regions, such as Latin America, also performed well in the quarter. Western Europe and South-East Asia were the only two regions to report a drop in growth rate in the period.

As the Point Topic figures show, the worldwide total of broadband lines reached 263.8 million at the end of September, with a total of 16.9 million lines added over the quarter.

The world's DSL total reached 173 million, due to 10 million lines being added over the quarter. Among the three access technologies, DSL is still dominating the broadband market with a total market share of 65.6 per cent.

For Fibre to the Exchange (FTTx), the market continues to grow at a rate of 12.6 per cent, almost twice as fast as in cable modem, reaching 27 million subscribers at the end of Q3 2006.

In regions such as Asia Pacific and North America, the quarterly growth in FTTx is well over 20 per cent and the total number of FTTx subscribers in the Asia Pacific region outpaced cable modem by 320,000.