Broadband booms for BT

23 Dec 2004

The broadband battle will close 2004 in BT’s favour. Figures from the telco confirm that demand for DSL has gone through the roof with December seeing around 60,000 connections every week.

Ben Verwaayen, BT's chief executive, said: "We are currently making a new broadband connection every ten seconds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We reached three million ADSL connections in August of this year, so to have now reached four million before Christmas is tremendous news.”

At the start of the year there were some 3.2m broadband connections in the UK, split fairly evenly between DSL and cable. Since then, demand has gone through the roof. There are now more than four million DSL connections in the UK and with an estimated 1.7m cable broadband customers growth across the market is steaming ahead.

BT have also taken steps to extend the reach of its broadband service resulting in an estimated million more homes and businesses being able to get connected DSL broadband. Their accelerated roll-out should make DSL broadband available to 99.6 per cent of UK homes and businesses by summer 2005.

The boom once more highlights BT's dominance of the wholesale sector and Ofcom’s demands last month for “substantive behavioural and organisational changes” have left the telco until February to come up with a range of proposals to satisfy the regulator's demands. If it doesn't, then Ofcom has threatened to take them to the cleaners.

Source: www.theregister.co.uk

print this article