16.6 million customers are connecting to broadband in the UK

Based on recently released figures the total number of UK broadband connections has now reached 16.6 million.

The number of internet connections using broadband has increased from second quarter figures in 2007 of 14.38 million to figures of 16.6 million in this years second period according to the latest reports for the quarter released by Ofcom.

There was relatively little change in BT retail DSL connections with a market share of 26.5 percent shown by the Telecommunications Market Data Tables. The year leading up to June of 2008, however, showed a rise in the number of connections from 3.716 million to a total of 4.396 million. A decline was seen in the number of customers that used a connection other than DSL with figures dropping to 3.846 million from 5 million.

With a customer base jumping by nearly half a million for Virgin Media, the company’s cable service has become more popular than ever. A significant rise from 2.459 million to 4.797 million was seen in customer using Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) DLS packages. These figures mean that the number of people in the UK subscribing to unbundled broadband connections has risen to 2.338 million.

The increase in the popularity of subscriptions to Virgin Media and BT’s less expensive unbundled LLU DSL services has led to problems for Internet Service Provider (ISPs) using BT based DSL broadband.

As more and more customers begin switching over to cheaper providers and both Virgin Media and BT now offering lower priced services it is becoming an increasing struggle for the smaller ISPs to compete. Another big attraction for many customers looking to change providers is the high speeds that Virgin Media are now offering. Recent rankings for the fastest download speeds on a popular price comparison site saw Virgin Media at the top of the list. The new 50Mbps service offered by the ISP will soon be available to any customers that are looking for the highest speed broadband connections.