The region’s choice of Internet access has been rapidly moving from dial-up to broadband, Asia also claiming the position of the world’s leading Internet region in terms of users.

Broadband access continues to become more sophisticated, with the developed markets moving to FttH.

The developed economies of Asia were also leading the way in the building of powerful NGNs in the region.

In looking at the Asian telecom market, it is impossible to avoid the impact of China and, to some extent, India. With its huge population and strongly developing economy, China is a real presence in the region. Having become the single biggest mobile market in the world, China continued to expand its mobile subscriber base at a rate of 20 percent per annum into 2008; as a consequence, it claimed 560 million mobile subscribers by March 2008.

Over the same period, India’s mobile subscriber base was growing at an annual rate of almost 60 percent and had reached 245 million by March 2008. The two markets between them claimed more than 50 percent of the total regional mobile market.

In the meantime, while China and India had been attracting the publicity, a long-time global and regional telecoms giant in the shape of Japan had been keenly maintaining its reputation for innovation by regularly adding value to the telecom market. Its industry leadership has embraced the application of wireless Internet access, with over 87 million mobile subscribers using either NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode (48 million) or one of the other proprietary products by early 2008.