China has the world's largest fixed-line broadband population - but takes just a quarter of the revenue of the US, a survey has found.
The two Chinese broadband carriers earned $7.9 billion in broadband revenue from 81.9 subscribers in 2008.
By comparison, the world's biggest market, the US, took $32 billion from 78.5 million connections, according to Pyramid Research.
China has 81.9 million broadband connections, behind Japan, the US and Germany in terms of service revenues.
Japan took second place on the revenue chart, with an estimated $23 billion, and third on the subscriber base chart, with 30.3 million connections.
Pyramid expects these countries to hold the same position in the subscriber base table until at least 2013. At that time China will have around 220 million connections, compared to a forecast 101 million in the US.
The research firm predicts that this increased subscriber base will allow China to overtake Germany to become the third-biggest market by revenue.