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BT continues to dominate broadband
(08-11-07) - BT brought its broadband customer base up to 4,074,000 over the past quarter, maintaining its position as the UK’s biggest broadband provider.
The retail arm of the former monopoly - the part of BT (www.BT.com) that supplies home users with broadband, home phone and now digital TV - continued its growth with 178,000 new broadband customers in the three months to 30 September 2007.
This means that BT’s retail share of the non-cable broadband market stood at 35 per cent in this last quarter.
The report also highlighted growth in the provider’s digital TV service BT Vision (www.BTVision.bt.com), which launched in spring this year. Having added the BT Vision Sports subscription option - which includes 288 near-live premiership football matches for less that £1 a week - BT Vision had 60,000 customers at the end of October. It has also launched a self-install option, “offering customers the choice to install BT Vision without the need for an engineer visit”.
Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “BT has been working hard to become a full telecoms service provider despite losses in its traditional services, such as fixed-line telephony.
“It has held onto the top broadband spot in spite of being undercut by other ISPs on price."
However, he warned that with broadband take-up slowing, BT will have to step up competition against other big provider such as Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com) which is the country’s second biggest ISP with more than 3.5 million cable broadband connections, and Sky (www.Sky.com) which was the UK’s fastest growing provider last quarter, adding 233,000 broadband customers and passing the one million milestone in less than 14 months.
“The rollout of its 21 Century Network, offering speeds of up to 24Mb across the country will help to bolster its position,” he said. “And as the digital TV switchover - which began last month - gathers pace, more people will be looking at BT Vision.”
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