Sky Broadband UK Tops TalkTalk to Total 4.1 Million ISP Subscribers

Sky Broadband (BSkyB) has today become the UK’s 3rd largest ISP after its latest results to 30th September 2012 (Q3) saw them add +102,000 new quarterly broadband subscribers to reach a total of 4,103,000 (jumping TalkTalk’s 4,047,000). But growth itself was sharply down from +138k in Q2 and +212k in Q1.

Sky now have over 2.7 million fully unbundled (LLU) customers (up by 48% year-on-year), which covers about 84% of UK homes via two thousand BT telephone exchanges. The operator still hopes to reach 88% by June 2013.

Jeremy Darroch, CEO of BSkyB, said:

“We have made a strong start to the year, delivering another good quarterly performance and continuing to position the business for the long term. Our investment in high quality content and innovative services has delivered excellent levels of loyalty and generated good growth in customers and products. At the same time, we continue to drive improvements in efficiency, reliability and customer service throughout our operations.

This approach continues to generate strong financial results with good growth in revenues and earnings. Looking forward, whilst we continue to see a challenging consumer environment in the UK and Ireland, we are well positioned to execute our plans for the year.”

Meanwhile Sky’s Line Rental service also grew by +145,000 to reach 3,708,000 and their Telephony (voice) products grew by +120,000 to hit a total of 3,888,000. Finally, Sky’s revenue stood at £1,715m (+4%) and the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) per year increased to £550 from £548 in the previous quarter. Churn also saw a slight increase from 9.9% to 10.4% during Q3.