UK Broadband ISP Connections Top 20.43 Million in Q4 2011

The communications regulator, Ofcom, has confirmed in its latest quarterly Telecommunications Market Data Tables (Q4 2011) update that the UK is home to a total of 20.43 million fixed line home and small business broadband connections (excludes corporate), which includes 412,000 from superfast fibre optic based services (FTTC etc.).

Until recently Ofcom had a tendency to radically revise its stats for BT’s retail ISP division (i.e. by removing the FTTC connection stats post-release), which made it difficult to draw any firm conclusions. Thankfully that’s now changed as BTRetail’s ADSL/2 broadband figures have been merged with ‘Non-LLU ADSL’ broadband. At the same time Ofcom has added a separate table for “Other (inc. FTTx)” services, which reflects fibre based broadband service growth but is also dominated by the BTInfinity service.

The results show that ‘Non-LLU ADSL’ services, such as those from BT and BTWholesale based broadband ISPs, have continued to see steady growth; though the vast majority of this comes from BT’s retail division with a total market share of 29.3%. Meanwhile unbundled (LLU) broadband ADSL / ADSL2+ services have grown to match BT’s platform and look set to overtake them in the next quarter.

Virgin Media has also continued to find new customers for its superfast cable (DOCSIS) broadband platform, which is despite their actual coverage being relatively unchanged. Separately the report found that the UK is home to 33.2 million fixed telephone lines (unchanged over Q3-2011) and 81.6 million active mobile subscribers (up from 81.4m in Q3).

Ofcom’s Telecommunications Market Data Tables (Q4-2011)
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/telecoms/q4-2011.pdf