Rate your broadband service!

Happy with broadband? Or is it letting you down?

Rate your broadband ISP here >>

BT sees Q3 revenues rise, helped by Broadband and networked IT services

The group released their third quarter results today and said revenues rose by 1 percent.

BT had 12.2 million wholesale broadband connections at December 31, 2007.  But 3.7 million of them are local loop unbundled lines (LLU), which are used by companies such as Sky and Talk Talk.  BT retains less control of LLU lines which means it makes less money from them.

There were 511,000 new wholesale connections in the quarter, with BT’s Retail division claiming a respectable 177,000 of them.  BT Retail (BT Total Broadband) remains the UK’s largest retail provider with a customer base of 4.251 million.

The group also reported strong growth from networked IT services.  Along with broadband, BT collectively refers to these as “new-wave” services.

Overall, the group’s revenues rose to 5.15 billion pounds, with new-wave revenue contributing a 7 percent growth.  Revenue from traditional business continued to decline as expected, and was 3 percent lower.

BT’s 21CN programme is also gathering momentum this year.  This includes Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC), which is due to launch this spring, and will offer up to 24Mbps services to all its wholesale customers using ADSL2 technology (as currently used by certain LLU ISPs such as BE).  Trials are currently taking place at several exchanges in the West Midlands.

Ben Verwaayen, Chief Executive of BT Group, said:  “We remain the UK’s number one retail broadband provider with 35 per cent of the installed DSL and LLU base, and BT Vision customers more than doubled in the quarter.”

Yesterday, Sky revealed that they added 260,000 broadband customers over the last 6 months of 2007 when it posted its half year results.