BT connects 10 million to broadband

Fast internet on the up and up

2 January 2007 15:11 GMT / By Amber Maitland

BT has released its figures for broadband connections and has actually delivered double the number of connections that were forecast for 2006.

The company set a target of 5 million connections by the end of 2006 in April 2002, but actually delivered 10 million of them, far exceeding expectation.

To put it in to perspective, in April 2002 there were fewer than 150,000 DSL connections in the UK. It's no wonder that BT says broadband is the fastest growing consumer product, selling more than TVs or mobile phones.

The 10 million connections include those by BT Wholesale and Openreach; the former supplise more than 8.7 million customers via various service providers, while Openreach supplies around 1.3 million lines via local loop unbundlers.

Broadband over BT's network is outpace the speed of cable broadband adoption. Three years ago, half of all connections were cable, but now only 11% are.

BT Retail's share of the total broadband market has stagnated somewhat at around 24%, as this is its share both last year and the year before.

Full tags

Hardware, Networking, BT, Broadband