The total number of broadband lines around the world has reached 300 million, according to vendor Quantum Web.

The increase of 29.6 per cent from 231.5 million on 31 March 2006, is mainly due to high uptake in Asia-Pacific and Europe where there has been 30.5 per cent and 31.3 per cent growth respectively.

There are now some 117.7 million users in Asia-Pacific and 95.4 million in Europe.

Growth in the Americas has been much slower at 27.4 per cent, where the number of broadband subscribers rose to over 84.2 million lines by the end of March.

Middle East and Africa, the fourth largest market in the world, has shown the fastest regional growth at 34.5 per cent and 3.2 million lines by the end of March 2007.

Use of xDSL broadband connections grew 27.5 per cent to 195 million in the same period, while Cable modem increased 23.4 per cent to around 67.5 million lines.

Broadband adoption has recently reached 50 per cent of households in the UK, a level at which most countries' rate of adoption has started to slow.