Just 10 providers cover 88% of UK broadband market

Friday 30 June 2006 15:36:00 by Andrew Ferguson

Everyone knows most of the big five names in the UK broadband marketplace, but beyond this it can be guesswork. Point Topic has published a paper giving details of the top ten broadband providers in the UK based on the number of subscribers, we have reproduced the table below:

The full analysis can be found on Point-Topic.com.

Looking at figures, what is most striking is the big gap between Orange and Pipex, it is like crossing over into the truly large ISP market is a difficult proposition, though this may also be linked to the amount of money spent on things like national TV advertising campaigns. Another interesting point to note is that while the number of subscribers grew by 9.3% overall, the number was pretty static among the providers outside this top ten at 0.7%. Though of course it is possible individual providers did out perform the average, gaining from other providers who are falling out of favour or who shutdown in the two quarters. NTL Inc is actually the largest provider, as you could combine the NTL and Telewest figures to give the group 2,822,000 customers versus BT Retail with 2,481,000.