Posted: 27th Jan, 2011 By: MarkJ

Media giant BSkyB ( Sky Broadband ) has released its latest set of quarterly results to 31st December 2010 (Q4) and revealed that they are now home to
3,006,000 broadband ISP subscribers. That's a very impressive
quarterly increase of +204,000, well above the +178,000 added in Q3-2010 and Q2-2010's +119,000 or even Q1's +101,000. The strong pattern of growth is evident for all to see.
Sky also added +187,000 new telephony (voice call) customers (+203,000 in Q3-2010) and +269,000
line rental customers (+260,000 in Q3-2010). Similarly the number of Sky's 3m broadband customers who are connected to its fully unbundled ( LLU ) platform has grown from 1 Million in Q3-2010 to 1.2 Million now. The rest are on its shared LLU or BT based packages.
On top of all that BSkyB has also confirmed an earlier report (
here) by officially acquiring Wi-Fi Hotspot operator The Cloud. The acquisition gives Sky ownership of over
5,000 public Wi-Fi locations across the UK and will be used to launch
Sky Anywhere. This service aims to provide customers with easy public wireless internet access to Sky's content on multiple devices while away from home.
Sky's CEO, Jeremy Darroch, said:
"In the second quarter, we saw strong demand across the board, passing our target of 10 million customers and adding more than one million additional subscription products for the first time. In particular, high definition continued to grow strongly and we achieved our highest broadband growth for more than two years.
Overall, almost one in four customers [24%] now choose to take all three of TV, broadband and telephony from us, which is contributing to further strong ARPU growth and good levels of customer loyalty.
Later in the year, we will launch a new service, Sky Anywhere, to make it easier for customers to enjoy our programmes wherever they are. And we will open a new facility in Sheffield as the next step in a programme to expand our network of contact centres, which will deliver an improved experience for customers and result in around 1,500 new Sky jobs around the UK."
Overall Sky's
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) reached a new high of £541 per annum, although few broadband services have managed to maintain this level of growth for long. Group revenue for the period increased by 15% on the prior year to £3,186 million (2010: £2,773 million) benefiting from strong growth in retail subscription, wholesale and advertising.
Sadly there's still no news on Sky's future broadband plans, although they are continuing to run closed customer trials using BT's 'up to' 40Mbps FTTC service.