UK on brink of broadband milestone

Britain's telecommunications industry is very close to signing up its one millionth broadband customer - an important milestone in the creation of Broadband Britain.

An official announcement is expected this week, and the event is likely to be hailed by both government and telcos as proof that broadband is thriving in the UK. It is less than six months since Britain reached 500,000 broadband users.

An Oftel spokeswoman said today that Britain will soon have one million broadband subscribers.

"We're approaching one million broadband users. It should happen pretty soon, but we're not sure exactly when," she said.

The Department of Trade and Industry wouldn't confirm when the one millionth customer would sign up, but did say they were optimistic about the state of Britain's broadband market.

"We're encouraged by the speed of take-up," said a DTI spokeswoman.

However, sources indicate that the landmark could be imminent.

Around 20,000 people are thought to be signing up for broadband each week, either from a cable firm or an ISP that is reselling BT's broadband product.

This is a massive improvement on last year and follows several advertising campaigns and price cuts, of which the most significant was probably BT's decision to halve the cost of its wholesale ADSL.

Graeme Wearden writes for ZDNet UK