UK Broadband Growth On the Fast Lane; Talk of a Double-Dip Recession Falls Flat

Broadband growth in the UK, particularly the superfast services, has stepped on to the fast lane. Stats from analyst firm Point Topic reveal the increasing demand for high speed broadband service among the British consumers. This clearly dismisses talk of a double-dip recession, which was predicted to happen in the UK broadband market some time ago.

During the third quarter of 2011, a total of 289,000 broadband lines were added to the UK market, bettering the 240,100 lines of the previous quarter.

Combining these two, the number of broadband lines in the country surpassed 20.4 million by the end of September 2011. This shows a 6.4 percent increase in growth than the previous year that attained a total of 19.2 million lines in the market.

Going by this pace, it is expected that the UK will be adding a million superfast broadband lines by the end of 2011. This shows that more than 5 percent of British broadband users will be using superfast connections, which promises a minimum of 25Mpbs download speed.

Virgin Media, the most benefiting company, revealed that the decrease of 13,000 broadband customers in the second quarter have jumped to 24,000 in the next quarter after the arrival of the superfast connections.

They pointed out that 54 percent of their new subscribers opted for the superfast broadband featuring more than 30Mbps speed. This hints that at least 50,000 new customers are paying extra for premium speeds.

After the launch of 30Mbps service in February, the number of customers reached 377,000 in just six months time. Many customers are ready to pay an extra £5 per month in order to jump from 10Mbps to 30Mbps speeds.

Meanwhile, the one third of signings at the BT Infinity service was new for the company in the second quarter, after the trend of superfast connections started. By the third quarter, the company added about 30,000 new customers in their superfast broadband service.

Though both the companies have shown their gain in the broadband services, most of the non-user households might have had broadband connections before. But, the arrival of the superfast network has attracted more customers during the face of hard economic times.

The increase in availability of fibre-based services with around 50 ISPs now selling fibre-based products via Openreach network, hints that the superfast connections will gain more in the next year.