New research from Envisional, an Internet analyst firm, has alleged that just three of the UK's largest ISPs were responsible for 65% of illegal music (P2P torrent) downloads during June and July 2008.

Envisional traced over 28,000 unique IP addresses during June and found that 22.6% belonged to the Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk, AOL UK etc.), 21.6% were from Virgin Media and BT took the last spot of 21.2%. July remained virtually identical, albeit with Virgin Media on 22.8%, BT 21.5% and the Carphone Warehouse at 21.4%.

The figure is hardly surprising given that, combined, all three providers account for 11m of the UKs broadband customer base, while the market as a whole is home to over 16m. Naturally the number of illegal downloader’s is directly proportional to the scale of the ISPs concerned.

Still, it will be interesting to see whether the figures remain the same after the new illegal file-sharing warning letters have had a chance to circulate. We suspect that, provided the scheme is a success, then the industry may start turning its attention more towards smaller providers.