BSkyB Tops 3.86 Million UK Sky Broadband ISP Subscribers

Sky (Sky Broadband) has today released its latest financial results to 31st March 2012 (Q1), which confirms that it managed to add a staggering +212,000 new home broadband subscribers during the first quarter to reach a new total of 3,863,000 (well above the +166,000 added in Q4-2011). A very strong quarter indeed.

The operator has clearly benefitted from a raft of special promotions (6 Months FREE Unlimited Broadband and Anytime Calls), the introduction of a new FREE Wi-Fi service (here) and of course the most recent launch of their superfast Broadband Unlimited Fibre (FTTC) package (here).

In addition Sky are also working to expand the coverage of their unbundled (LLU) broadband network to 88% of the UK by June 2013 (currently 82-83% or 1,964 telephone exchanges) and plan to launch the NOW TV service this summer 2012, which aims to deliver access to Sky’s content via a “wide range of broadband-connected devices” (here).

Sky’s CEO, Jeremy Darroch, said:

“We have made a good start to 2012. In what remains a tough economic environment, strong and consistent execution of our plan has delivered good growth across our product range. We have grown revenues by 5% while holding prices flat for customers and delivered a record nine-month operating profit of £908 million alongside 24% growth in earnings per share. The decision to focus our marketing on home communications has paid off with our fastest quarter of growth since launch and confirmation that Sky is now Britain’s favourite triple play provider.

More households are choosing Sky and taking more products from us because we’re constantly looking to improve the quality and value that we offer. Already in 2012, we’ve launched an entirely new channel dedicated to Formula 1, given millions of households access to a huge choice of on demand TV and made our market-leading broadband service even better with the launch of our fibre products and free out-of-home WiFi. Looking ahead, we will continue to improve our service for all Sky customers as we believe this is the best way to build a larger business and continue to increase returns for shareholders.”

It’s interesting to note that 281,000 of Sky’s broadband subscribers take the standalone service (i.e. no TV included). Separately the operator also managed to add +220,000 new telephony customers, which took their total to 3,627,000. By contrast the number of customers with a combined TV, broadband and telephony (“triple play“) service bundle is now 3.2 million (up 24% year on year), which represents 31% of their total customer base.

As a side note, some 63% of Sky’s broadband customers are now on their cheaper and more flexible fully unbundled (LLU) platform, with the rest on their shared LLU or BT-based network.