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Hungary is Currently Leading Eastern Europe in Terms of Broadband Penetration

Posted on: Friday, 24 August 2007, 15:12 CDT

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c66565) has announced the addition of "Broadband Overview: Eastern Europe" to their offering.

This report provides an overview of the broadband markets and key players in the main Eastern Europe countries.

Broadband in Eastern Europe is rapidly gaining momentum, driven by increasing competition and more widespread deployment of DSL and/or cable services.

Poland and Russia have exhibited the highest levels of absolute growth over the previous six-year period. As a proportion of households, Internet penetration is highest in Poland, with Czech Republic and Slovakia also showing rapid adoption.

Hungary is currently leading Eastern Europe in terms of broadband penetration. Ukraine continues to be relatively undeveloped in terms of Internet and broadband penetration, largely due to poor Internet infrastructure, and low availability of residential broadband.

Broadband availability is gradually improving across most of Eastern Europe, with higher levels of bandwidth and improving geographical coverage. Bandwidth in excess of 5Mbit/s is now available in Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Within the broadband market, DSL is gaining increased momentum, most notably in Slovakia and Russia, whilst the prevalence of UPC is driving cable in some key areas. Ukraine is an exception to this, where Volia has enabled cable to overtake DSL for the first time.

The state of Eastern Europe's telecommunications differs significantly across the region, with a mix of aluminium, copper, fixed-wireless and fibre networks. In many of these countries, we are seeing significant fixed-to-mobile substitution, largely due to low fixed line penetration in some countries.

The majority of networks are copper-based, but in a number of countries legacy aluminium networks are still used for communications services. We have a spurt of municipal fibre deployments, but these have been relatively few and are typically not extended beyond the initial group of residents.

Due to the relatively low fixed-line penetration in much of Eastern Europe, we see an opportunity for fixed-wireless access, at least in the short term. The demand for advanced content is limited, which would deem FWA a good alternative for basic data, and even VoIP services.

Broadband overview: Eastern Europe

Regional overview and analysis

Country overview and analysis

Key figures

Key broadband players

Regulatory environment

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c66565

Source: Ovum

Source: Business Wire

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