Ofcom Reports UK Broadband Lines Total 21.37 Million in Q3 2012

The latest Telecoms Market Data Tables Q3 2012 update from Ofcom has revealed that the United Kingdom is now home to a total of 21,371,000 fixed line broadband ISP connections (excludes corporate lines), which is up by +264,000 over the previous quarter and includes 639,000 superfast fibre broadband (FTTx) lines.

It should be noted that the regulators figures, which are shown in the table below (000′s), tend to lag behind the latest results from ISPs. For example, BT alone has just revealed that it had more than a million fibre optic based broadband (FTTC etc.) subscribers during Q4-2012 (here). Check out our Top 10 ISPs page for the most recent totals.

The data indicates that Non-LLU ADSL services, such as those delivered via BTWholesale based broadband ISPs, has grown again but continues to follow a somewhat stagnant up-down-up-down pattern. Meanwhile cheaper unbundled / LLU ADSL (e.g. Sky Broadband), faster fibre optic / FTTx (BTInfinity etc.) and Cable (Virgin Media) based services have managed to maintain a more persistent level of growth.

At the end of Q3 2012 there was a total of 33.0 million analogue lines and ISDN channels, which is down from 223,000 (0.7%) at the end of Q3 2011. On top of that retail fixed voice telephony services generated £2.1bn in revenues for Q3 2012, which is down £61m (2.8%) vs Q3 2011 but roughly unchanged from the previous quarter.

The total number of active Mobile Broadband subscribers also increased slightly to 5.007 million in Q3 2012 (up from 4.989m in Q2 2012). It should be noted that this refers to datacard and USB Modem (Dongle) based connections (i.e. it excludes Smartphone based internet subscriptions).

Telecoms Market Data Tables Q3 2012 (PDF)
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/…/cmr/telecoms/Q3-2012.pdf