Analyst Point Topic has issued a brief summary of the UK broadband market, showcasing recent next generation broadband developments by both BT and Virgin Media. The report also highlighted how 2009, despite finishing ahead of the groups forecast, was generally a very slow period. However they predict that 2010 will see the market bounce back.

During the year there was only a 10.6% growth in broadband overall, a sharp decline from the 19.9% in 2007. Much of the slowdown came in the second half of the year when market saturation combined with the advancing recession to cut the number of adds from almost 1m in the first half to only 675,000 in the second.


Broadband subscriptions in the UK exceeded expectations in the last 6 months of 2008, reaching 17.4 million by the end of the year and topping forecasts by 0.2%. O2 was the biggest new story of 2008, starting the year with only 71,000 broadband lines, it added 270,000 more to increase its market share by 1.5%.

BSkyB ( Sky Broadband ) had a good 12 months too and built on its accomplishments in previous years to achieve even bigger gains, adding 727,000 lines to reach almost 2 million lines. These successes have contributed to DSL increasing its share, from 78.0% to 78.6% of the UK broadband market:


Point Topic predicts that 2010 will see better mobile coverage and bandwidth upgrades, which should help mitigate some of the current difficulties. The long-term prospects for Digital Britain apparently look good.