Demand for high-speed Internet access in Taiwan has risen steadily over the past nine months, with almost one million users expected to have broadband connections by year end, an analyst at a leading information technology industry think-tank said yesterday.
"A total of 890,000 people used broadband access to connect to the Internet as of the end of September," said Nancy Lee of Focus on Internet News and Data (FIND), a research group at the government-backed Institute for Information Industry (資策會).
That compares with 610,000 broadband users in June and 360,000 in March this year, Lee said.
"We might not see the number of broadband users exceed one million users level by the end of this year, but it'll be close," she said.
The use of ADSL high-speed connections is currently four times more common than that of cable modem, with 710,000 people using ADSL in September compared with 180,000 using cable modem, she said.
ADSL, or asymmetrical digital subscriber line, uses regular phone lines, while cable modem uses cable TV networks to gain access to the Internet at a high bandwidth.
The online population, including those surfing the net via broadband, stood at 7.55 million people in September, translating into a penetration rate of 34 percent, she said.
By comparison, the number of Internet users stood at 6.74 million in March this year, a penetration rate of 30 percent, and at 4.31 million users in September 1999 when the penetration rate was just 20 percent, she added.
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