BT has, through its arrangement with over 150 broadband providers, delivery four million ADSL connections in the UK. This figure also includes connections sold directly to the public by BT Retail.
BT say they are connecting a new customer every 10 seconds, equating to an average of nearly 60,000 new connections each week.
The last million milestone was only back in August 2004 when three million connections were announced. A million new connections in one quarter is pretty good.
Currently there isn’t really any competition for BT Wholesale, although some companies are starting to make early moves with specialist services like UK Online.
We see this as another in the long running back and forth between BT and OFCOM. BT tells the press “No BT would equal No Broadband” (as Christopher Bland did to the Telegraph), OFCOM tells them to trim their prices. Is their any co-incidence that BT issued this news on the heals of OFCOM ordering BT to cut the cost of third party access to the customer, opening the market for strong competition for BT Wholesale?. As the Guardian commented
At the moment BT is the gatekeeper to all but 16,000 of the UK’s 25m phone lines, and charges for access to them. The telecoms operator suffered a blow six months ago when it was forced to lower the prices it charges for access to its network. Ofcom is aiming to get a system in place next year that will see 1 million lines unbundled a year.
Will BT continue to be so strong with meaningful competition?