UK broadband locked in big boys' grip

Smaller ISPs left with fat pipe crumbs

Despite Ofcom's best efforts to encourage competition, it seems the big names are still dominating the UK broadband market.

According to a new report from broadband analyst group Point Topic, the top ten broadband suppliers have nearly 90 per cent of the UK high-speed internet access market sewn up.

Point Topic found that incumbent telco BT is still the UK's number one supplier with approximately 2.5 million of the UK's some 10.7 million broadband lines. BT's dominance has actually increased since last year, when Ofcom 'encouraged' the telco to split its broadband access division from its retail unit. The move led to the creation of a new business, BT Openreach.

The report, which treats the newly-merged NTL, Telewest and Virgin as separate entities, also reveals that when treated as a single company, the three ISPs tot up three million customers to BT's 2.5 million.

According to an Ofcom spokesman, there is no single dominant player in the retail market - leader BT has around a quarter of subscribers - which is a sign there is healthy competition in the broadband space.

"From a regulatory point of view, you have to ask is there a dominant provider?... In retail broadband this isn't the case. There's a series of smaller players all competing for consumers' business with different price points, products and services. And, as technology develops, such as with local loop unbundling, it's possible for those providers to have more flexibility," he told silicon.com.

There are now six ISPs in the country, Point Topic found, with over a million broadband lines each, in decreasing order of size: BT Retail, NTL, AOL, Telewest , Tiscali and Wanadoo. ISPs outside the top ten have 1.2 million in total between them.