BT Wholesale has managed to gain an additional 1m connections within the space of only four months, taking the total to 4m. That's roughly one new connection every ten seconds and an average 8,500 per day:

Ben Verwaayen, BT’s chief executive said: “We are currently making a new broadband connection at least every ten seconds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We reached three million ADSL connections in August of this year, so to have now reached four million well before Christmas is tremendous news. It shows that the take up rate for broadband is accelerating apace.”

More than 95% of UK homes and businesses can now receive broadband service and that figure will reach 99.4% by next summer, putting the UK ahead of any other G7 country in terms of DSL availability.

The four million connections are shared between more than 150 service providers, including BT’s retail operations. There are also an estimated 1.7 million cable broadband customers in the UK.