Fierce Competition Will Further Drive UK Broadband Growth

Residential broadband in the UK encompasses 56% of all UK households — a little more than 15 million connections at the end of 2007. Despite growth slowing, Forrester sees a further 8 million new broadband connections before the end of 2013, raising penetration to 82% of all UK households. The downside of this opportunity for UK ISPs is the increasing problem of churn. No less than 3.5 million households switched suppliers in 2007; we expect that more than 5 million will do so in 2013. Despite the industry attention around new access technologies, such as fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and WiMAX, their current share of 1% of all household connections will grow to only 7% by 2013.