Worldwide revenue earned from services sold to broadband users more than doubled last year, indicating a potentially strong market for Internet service providers who need to find ways of increasing revenues, a market research firm said

Revenues from "broadband value-added services" increased to $6.9 billion by the end of 2004 from $3.3 billion at the beginning of the year, United Kingdom-based Point Topic Ltd. said.

Most value-added services increased both in revenue and users, providing good news for broadband service providers that have had to cut prices in order to compete, the research firm said. Security was the top revenue generator, followed, in order, by home networking, Internet telephony, gaming, music downloads and video over broadband.

The number of consumer broadband lines increased by about 45 percent last year to 131 million, while access revenues rose only 22 percent to $39 billion, due to price cuts between competing DSL and cable operators, Point Topic said.

As of the beginning of this year, consumer value-added services" were contributing an extra 18 percent to broadband-access revenues, compared with only 10 percent a year ago.

In related news, Americans signed up for broadband cable and DSL in record numbers in the first quarter, according to a study released Tuesday by the Leichtman Research Group.