Posted on: Wednesday, August 8, 2001

Internet forecast bullish on Asia-Pacific

Bloomberg News Service

STAMFORD, Conn. — Internet use in the Asia-Pacific region will more than double by 2003 and triple by 2005 as online-access fees decline, a recent study says.

The number of Internet subscribers will grow to 183.3 million people by 2003 and 248 million by 2005, from 78 million last year, Dataquest said in a statement. The United States is expected to have 162.8 million Web users in 2003.

"Falling prices and improved infrastructure, especially in countries with big populations like China and India, are a recipe for encouraging large numbers of new subscribers," Andrew Chetham, a senior analyst at Dataquest, said in a statement.

India, the second largest country by population, will have the highest growth rate of new subscribers, according to the study. By 2005, India will have 21.3 million subscribers, trailing China, Japan and South Korea in the region, Dataquest said.

Dataquest is a unit of Stamford-based technology research company Gartner Inc.

China has the largest population, with about 1.27 billion people, according to the State Department. The United States has about 285 million people, according to the Census Bureau.

America Online, owned by New York-based AOL Time Warner Inc., is the largest Internet-access service, with more than 30 million online subscribers.