25 October 2007
Industry watchdog Ofcom has released its latest quarterly figures yesterday, showing the amount of broadband lines enabled in the UK.
Its Telecommunications Market report, which covers the first period of 2007, shows that Britain now hosts just under 14.4 million broadband connections.
Of these, 3.7 million were ADSL copper wire lines run by BT and 3.2 million were cable lines run by Virgin Media.
The increasing prominence of local loop unbundling (LLU) - where rival internet service providers unhook their networks from BT's at telephone exchanges - was also reflected by the results, with 5 million UK LLU lines detected.
"Subscribers from both Virgin's cable service and BT Wholesale's third party ISP's have been jumping onto rival LLU based products, no doubt lured in by a mix of cheaper prices, bundles and general market acquisition movement," industry source ISPreview commented.
Nevertheless, increased sales for BT broadband was registered from last quarter's Ofcom results was detected, with the telecom's overall market share found to be growing from 23.9% to 25.9%.