BT retain their Broadband crown…

… and add a couple of extra jewels to it in the process.

BT have netted a further 200,000 new Broadband customers this year, meaning that their position as the top provider of Broadband internet services in the UK has been regained, after the combined total of customers represented by Virgin Media briefly pipped the UK Broadband crown in the wake of the launch of the rebranded ntl and Telewest in March – BT now supply Broadband to over 3.6 million UK homeowners.

Virgin have experienced a fairly sizeable degree of customer migration which has partially been attributed to both the Sky carriage fees debacle, and the recent decision to impose stringent measures on bandwidth use (or abuse, depending on how you look at it) across its cable network.

BT have also recently launched a series of ads, trumpeting their IPTV service BT Vision, a combination of Freeview-esque digital TV with added pay as you go on-demand options. The BT Vision receiver broadcasts free-to-air digital channels which arrive through a standard TV aerial; the additional pay per view content is downloaded over a Broadband connection and then routed to the set-top box via the BT Home Hub, making this service an attractive offer to BT Broadband customers who might want a little more than the Freeview channels, but don’t want to have to pay for an expensive monthly subscription.

The service has been in existence for some time now, but the timing of this publicity campaign is perfect – the Sky/Virgin debate is still relatively fresh in people’s minds, and so migrating customers from these platforms may find BT’s offer an understandably attractive one.

As has been mentioned in our news feed, BT have also recently announced that they are tweaking their server settings to improve their commercial internet services, promising increases in connection speeds which will not translate into a price hike, and will mostly likely benefit Option 1 customers. BT have already reduced the prices of their internet packages from what they were at the beginning of 2007, meaning their Broadband throne is set to remain secure for the foreseeable future.

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