The overall number of broadband users in the UK continues to rise, but market watchers revealed today that the rate of growth of new subscriptions is falling rapidly.
Point Topic said that total UK broadband subscriptions will reach about 21 million by the end of 2012, comprising 19 million consumer lines and two million business lines.
About 330,000 and 550,000 consumer broadband lines were added in the middle two quarters of 2007 respectively, the lowest numbers since 2003. This is barely half the growth achieved in the previous two quarters, according to Point Topic.
The increase was due to good performance by the main broadband operators - Sky, BT Retail, Orange, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media - which added 660,000 lines while smaller competitors shared net losses of over 60,000 lines.
"A primary reason for the current slowdown in the market is the shrinking size of the remaining pool of dial-up users ready to be converted to broadband, " Point Topic stated.
One driver of steady growth in the consumer sector will be demographic advance. As people grow older, they will carry their internet habits with them into older age groups.
Point Topic estimates that about 73 per cent of homes and 85 per cent of business premises will have a broadband connection by the end of 2012.
Source: Robert Jaques, vnunet.com21 Nov 2007