Africa hardly impacts global fixed line broadband user numbers but that could change in the coming years.

This is according to broadband research by UK-based Point Topic.

The research, which was last week published by non-profit the Broadband Forum, points to global growth of 40 million more fixed line broadband users world-wide, bringing the global total to 678,455,893.

Copper-based technologies -- such as DSL, ADSL and ADSL2plus -- constitute over 50% of fixed line broadband technologies. But Point Topic says fiber-based technologies, such as VDSL and VDSL2, are making their presence felt in the global market with growth rates of 17.6% overall.

China, the US and Japan have the most fixed line broadband subscribers in the world with respectively 192 million, 95 million and 35 million users each.

No African country; though, features anywhere in Point Topic’s top ten fixed line broadband country list. Africa also lags far behind with regard to internet protocol television (IPTV) numbers.

As of the fourth quarter of 2014, Africa only had 128,500 IPTV subscribers compared to over 44 million in East Asia, 13 million in North America and over 28 million in Europe.

But Africa is proving to be a growth market with Gabon, Algeria and Morocco featuring in the research firm’s top ten fastest growing broadband markets. Each of these countries notched up fourth quarter 2014 percentage growth rates of over 5%.

“There are signs that fibre infrastructure in Africa will start to make an impact going forward, reflecting their second mover advantage,” said Oliver Johnson, chief executive officer of Point Topic in a statement.

“The relatively low deployment rate of DSL means any further growth can be based on optical technologies.

“Fixed wireless will also make up an increasing proportion of Africa’s subscribers in the coming quarters. With acceptable bandwidths and much lower deployment costs, the technologies that make up this sector are well placed to gain market share,” added Johnson.

Juanita Clark, who is the chief executive officer of the FTTH (Fibre to the Home) Council Africa, has told ITWeb Africa that fibre technologies are positioned for significant adoption on the continent.

“It is important to remember that many countries in Africa never had significant copper infrastructure to start with, therefore they are leap-frogging the ‘copper era’ and immediately deploying fibre,” Clark told ITWeb Africa.

“As customers demand more bandwidth operators are under tremendous pressure to deploy high bandwidth backhaul to keep up with demand, and fibre is the number one choice of infrastructure in greenfield deployments.

“Companies with large copper bases will naturally try to sweat their assets with technologies such as GFast, however new deployments are largely fibre,” Clark said.

However, Clark has told ITWeb Africa that key challenges face the continent in its quest for better fixed line broadband penetration.

These challenges include “cross border penetration to landlocked countries”, and in-country issues such as obtaining permissions for metro and access deployments.

Furthermore, bureacracy is also a key stumbling block for Africa, Clark explained.

“Red tape remains the number one barrier to fixed line infrastructure deployment. It is critical for African governments to remove red tape, or delays, and put effective policy and procedures in place,” she said.

Regardless of the challenges, Africa is increasingly being pushed into a position to use fibre infrastructure amid rising data demand.

And even wireless operators are feeling this pressure.

Clark said that it is envisaged that “as much as 47% of the mobile architecture” in Africa will be made up of fibre infrastructure in future.

“Networks are buckling under 3G will not for much longer be able to serve the needs of the data-hungry consumers, and all indications are that data consumption will double and triple over the next few years.

“Quality of Service (QoS) remains a key differentiator and it has been proven that consumers will pay more for Quality of Experience. Therefore fibre is becoming a critical infrastructure in backhaul architecture,” said Clark.