ISPs say falling broadband figures resulting from housing slump and mobile broadband

A number of Internet Service Providers have released figures relating to fixed line broadband take up over the last quarter, and have blamed falling figures on the housing slump and take up of mobile broadband.

Over the past few days a number of Internet Service Providers have released their fixed broadband take up figures for the past quarter, and many have blamed the falling take up of fixed line broadband on a number of factors, including the slump in the housing markets, strained household finances, and an increase in the take up of mobile broadband.

It was recently reported that the UK’s third largest ISP, Talk Talk, had slashed predictions over the take up of fixed line broadband over the year by fifty percent after recently released figures showed that its customer base had grown by only a portion of the level it had predicted.

An official from the ISP said: “It is a combination of fewer housing transactions, because buying a house is a key time when people change supplier, and more people buying mobile broadband instead of fixed line access.”

Figures have now also been released by the sixth largest ISP in the UK, Orange, which has revealed that in the last quarter it actually lost around forty four thousand broabdand customers, which was an increase on the thirty one thousand that it lost in the first quarter of the year.

Whilst BT did see its customer base grow in the second quarter by just over one hundred thousand, this was a fall from the one hundred and fifty thousand that signed up to BT in the first quarter of the year. BskyB has also seen its customer base go up, although not by a much as it did in the first quarter or in the same quarter last year.