UK broadband users up to 16.6m
January 23, 2009 at 1:52 pm
The fact that broadband is increasing in popularity across the country comes as no real surprise. However, the latest figures to emerge suggest that there are now 16.6 million broadband users located across the UK. This figure is higher than ever before.
The figures were released by Ofcom, which focused upon the second quarter figures from the Telecommunications Market Data Table. In 2007, second quarter figures put the number of broadband users at 14.38 million, meaning that an increase of 2.2 million has occurred in just one year.
Virgin Media seems to have been one of the biggest winners, with its service seeing half a million extra users. Local loop unbundled (LLU) DSL services have also seen huge increases in customer numbers, rising from 2.459 million to 4.797 million during the 12 month period.
BT-based DSL connections performed the worst, with figures dropping from over 5 million to just 3.846 million. There was also bad news for the smaller ISPs. As more and more people are signing up for the cheaper deals being offered by the larger companies, the smaller ISPs are finding it hard just to stay remotely competitive.
This latest news means that the UK is really starting to catch up with regards to broadband usage. Furthermore, it seems that it will not be too long before every household in the country will be connected.
As more and more companies battle it out to get customers signing up for their services, we can all hope to see some much cheaper prices emerge over the next few months and years. And, if they manage to combine these prices with better speeds, we will all be kept happy.
