2 Chinese ISPs Serve 20% of World Broadband Users

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "If you need a reminder of just how big China is—and just how important the Internet has become there—consider this stat: between them, two Chinese ISPs serve 20 percent of all broadband subscribers in the entire world and both companies continue to grow, even as growth slows significantly in more developed markets. Every other ISP trails dramatically. Japan's NTT comes in third with 17 million subscribers, and all US providers are smaller still. 'The gap between the top two operators and the world's remaining broadband service providers will continue to grow rapidly,' said TeleGeography Research Director Tania Harvey. 'Aside from the two Chinese companies, all of the top ten broadband ISPs operate in mature markets, with high levels of broadband penetration and rapidly slowing subscriber growth.'"

Choice

[Dan East]

And I bet the two ISPs serve different regions, in which case citizens wouldn't even get to choose between A and B.

The view from the other side...

[thej1nx]

The statement in the article could also be translated, less flatteringly, to "Rest of the world has already achieved adequate penetration of internet for most of their population, while China still has long way to go".

Keep in mind that in already saturated markets, like Tania Harvey says, growth of the market becomes pretty slow. Almost everyone in Japan, for example, already uses internet on PC or their cellphones etc. The companies may get customers to switch between them, but finding new customers is much harder.

Not to mention the "quality" of internet, one gets in China, what with half of it being blocked out/censored anyways. Long way to go before they catch up with the rest of the world.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Choice

[creat3d]

You seem to confuse American Idol/football stats with "accurate information on world affairs" or "unfiltered news on one's own country/government"... Do you work for the Chinese government or are you always this stupid?

Define broadband

[voss]

Do you define it as 256kbps(like the US did until 2 years ago), 1.5 mbps(at&t basic DSL), 10m(comcast), 25-50mbps(FIOS,uverse, next gen comcast)?

in the US there are plenty of users who cant yet get above 5 mbps.

Monopolies Are Bigger Than Cartels

[Doc Ruby]

I don't know what the point of this story is. China's a mafia economy, Japan's is state capitalism, America's is based on cartels that compete within with each other, but primarily defend their mutual cartel from any newcomer. None of that is good.

A healthy Internet is one that's highly distributed, decentralized. The more ISPs per person, the healthier and more stable the Internet. The more Chinese it is, the worse.

China has 20% of the world's population!

[Anonymous Coward]

So why is this news? It has 20% of the people in the world, so it has 20% of the broadband users .

What does "serve" mean?

[swb]

Does this mean as actual paying subscribers to a private residence?

Or does this mean "providing internet access to" some large group of people who primarily use internet cafes, cell phones or some other shared access method?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Developing vs. Developed

[clarkkent09]

Your post should be modded funny. China's growth has only started when and to the extent to it opened it's economy to capitalism. It's nothing to do with central planning. It's to do with selling off its vast population as a cheap labor force for capitalist (initially mostly Western, Japanese and Taiwanese, and more recently Chinese) companies.

Btw, sure you can accomplish a specific goal in the short term if you turn a nation of 100 million into 100 million slave laborers dedicated to that goal, and sacrifice a few million lives in the process, but that strategy ain't gonna work for long. Can't believe there are still Stalin apologists around today.

Re:Developing vs. Developed

[EEPROMS]

You are seriously deranged if you think China "with over 500 million people earning less than $2 a day" (higher than India) is a economic light for the rest of us to follow. The reality is China needs 12% growth just stop going backwards when compared to the west.

That is wildly inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Competition is the only thing that is able to drive prices lower without creating shortages. No competition means higher prices.

That only applies to completely free markets (and sometimes doesn't even work there). It only applies there because with no competition, the companies can and will charge as much as people are willing to spend ("Oh? We are the only company that sells fuel in this area? Fuel that people desperately need. We can charge whatever the fuck we want!") and with competition they are forced to lower their profit margins.

A regulatory body can look at the cost of materials, etc. and say "You really would be able to offer the service for X... You arent allowed to charge more than X+Y at most. If you are too incompetent to offer the service for that price, we will find someone more competent.". Of course, you can call that a form of competition (and yes, competition can and needs to exist even in completely socialistic systems) and you would be correct... But I doubt it is the kind of competition you had in mind there.