The communications regulator, Ofcom UK, has released its latest quarterly Telecommunications Market Data Tables Q4-2010 (PDF), which includes a breakdown of home (residential) and small business broadband internet connections. This reveals that at the end of last year the UK was home to 19,468,000 fixed line broadband ISP subscribers, which is up from 18,740,000 in Q4-2009 (+728,000).

The market share for BT Retail (BT's own consumer and business ISP) during this period has managed to grow slightly from 26% to 27.7%. Elsewhere much of the growth has again come from cheaper unbundled ( LLU ) providers and cable solutions ( Virgin Media ), with BT Wholesale supplied ISPs continuing to lose ground. The figures break down as follows.

Q4-2010 UK Fixed Line Broadband Subscribers
BT Retail DSL - 5,387,000 (Q4-2009 = 4,876,000)
Other DSL (exc. LLU) - 2,547,000 (Q4-2009 = 3,638,000)
Virgin Media (Cable) - 4,028,000 (Q4-2009 = 3,845,000)
Other inc. (LLU DSL) - 7,507,000 (Q4-2009 = 6,381,000)

Meanwhile total fixed phone line revenues were £2.3bn in Q4 2010, 5.5% lower than they had been a year previously. This came as a result of a 0.6% decrease in the total number of fixed lines to 33.3 million and a 5.2% decline in call volumes to 31.5 billion minutes over the same period.

The number of active mobile subscriptions for the three primary networks grew by 306,000 (+0.5%) over Q4 2010 to 66 million. However total mobile revenues declined by 3.0% between Q4 2009 and Q4 2010 across the three mobile operators covered in Ofcom's data tables (Everything Everywhere, O2 and Vodafone). Three (3) was not included.