Posted: 07th Sep, 2009 By: MarkJ
Ofcom has released its latest quarterly (Q1-2009) Telecommunications Market Data Tables (
Download .PDF), which includes a breakdown of total small business and residential broadband connections. At the end of Q1 2009 there were 17,557,000 residential and small business UK broadband connections, an increase of 1.6% on Q4 2008, which breaks down as follows.
BT Retail DSL (ADSL) - 4,634,000
Other DSL (exc. LLU) - 3,408,000
Virgin Media (Cable) - 3,730,000
Other inc. (LLU DSL) - 5,786,000
It's worth pointing out BT Retail's (BT's own ISP services) market share has remained fairly stable but did drop from 26.9% in Q4 2008 to 26.4% in Q1 2009, which is despite strong and continued growth in unbundled LLU DSL broadband services (from 5.53m in Q4 2008 to 5.78m in Q1 2009).
Unlike previous quarters the increase in unbundled LLU broadband connections (e.g. TalkTalk , Sky Broadband , O2 etc.) has not been matched by a near equal decrease in '
Other DSL' (e.g. BT Wholesale based ISPs). This fell only slightly from 3.410m in Q4 2008 to 3.408m in Q1 2009 and might suggest that new connections were more dominant than migrations.
Overall the quarterly growth in broadband connections was +281,000 or 1.6%, which is somewhat slower than the 2.1% recorded in the previous quarter. Typically these figures do not include wireless ( Wi-Fi ), Mobile Broadband or Satellite broadband connection statistics.