By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter

South Korea tops the table in the rate of fiber-based broadband Internet service subscribers, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Friday.

About 12.2 percent of the country's inhabitants are using the fiber-optic cable for their broadband connections, ahead of 10.2 percent in Japan and 6.0 percent in Sweden, the report said. The cutting-edge Internet service accounts for 39 percent of all subscribers in Korea, and 45 percent in Japan.

A total of 16 OECD countries had fiber broadband Internet subscribers, but only six of them ― Korea, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Slovakia ― had a penetration rate of over 1 percent.

"It's a big shift. There's a shift in the industry toward fiber and we're seeing it first in Korea and Japan," OECD economist Taylor Reynolds was quoted as saying.

DSL is still the most popular broadband technology in the 30 OECD member countries, accounting for 60 percent, but fiber, taking up nearly 9 percent of 251 million broadband users in the economic bloc, is the fastest-growing means of connection, the report said.

The super-fast Internet technology also can be used for other information-related fields in need of large bandwidth, such as high-definition television and video on demand.

The number of broadband subscribers in the OECD reached 251 million as of June 2008, up 14 percent from June 2007. This growth increased broadband penetration rates to 21.3 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, up from 20 in December 2007, according to the OECD.

The United States remained the largest broadband market in the OECD with 75 million subscribers.

hckim@koreatimes.co.kr