The latest research from Point Topic has revealed that uptake of UK broadband services have been more seriously impacted by the looming recession than first thought. The country added roughly 200,000 lines in Q4-2008, which is less than half what was forecast for the period before the recession set in and 100,000 less than October's updated forecast.

These figures would appear to support the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) estimates, which reported that the UK economy shrank by 1.5% in Q4. However with most of the increase coming from dialup migrations it's believed that the total number of land-line Internet access customers may have actually declined.

Overall Point Topic estimates that the total number of broadband lines in the UK rose to about 17.23 million by the end of 2008, from 17.04 million in the previous quarter:


These estimates are supported by earlier predictions from Ofcom's recent Q2-2008 Telecommunications Market Data Tables (here) and The Office of National Statistics Q3 results (here). The ONS in particular showed a decline in overall Internet connections of -0.4% for the period, though none of these reports seem to factor in Mobile Broadband uptake, which has been very strong.

To say that quarterly broadband additions are reduced by 10% for every -0.3% decline in the economy as a whole is probably simplistic but it provides one indication of what to expect in 2009. Point Topic believes that, at its worst, UK land-line broadband should still grow by +0.9m and make it past 18m by the end of 2009.