The number of global IPTV subscribers at the end of the second quarter was up 179% from a year earlier, with over 8 million people now using IPTV services, according to an announcement today by the DSL Forum at the European Broadband World Forum in Berlin.

Europe is the strongest market in terms of both growth and total subscriber numbers, with almost 5 million subscribers, more than 3 million of which were added between January and June 30^th of this year. The Americas, with only 1.69 million subscribers signed up in the first half of the year, are still lagging behind Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

The results, prepared by industry analyst firm Point Topic, also indicate that DSL continues to dominate broadband access, with almost 66% of subscribers – more than 200 million out of the world’s 313 million – using this technology. North America maintained its reign over the global broadband market with 16% of the world’s subscribers.

Western Europe continues to have the most broadband users, DSL Forum reported, with 72 million of the 86 million broadband subscribers using DSL. The Eastern European DSL market remains small, but, at 63%, showed the strongest growth exhibited in the first half of 2007.

With more than 63 million subscribers on board, the U.S. has the most broadband subscribers, but China tops the DSL subscriber list, with over 44 million of its 59 million broadband users connected via DSL. In total, the results showed that 15 countries now have more than three million DSL subscribers, and 29 have over one million.