Telewest beats BT in broadband 'Pepsi challenge'

UK cable provider Telewest has claimed it is beating BT in parts of Britain where there is a choice of broadband providers

Telewest has claimed that eight out of ten broadband users prefer its broadband service over BT's when given the chance to choose between the two.

The cable firm has released details of new research which shows 86 per cent of broadband users surveyed who live in areas served by both Telewest's and BT's broadband networks have signed up for Telewest's blueyonder product, rather than with an ISP offering ADSL.

According to Telewest, this is a blow to "big-spending BT", which recently splashed out £33m on promoting broadband.

David Hobday, deputy managing director of Telewest Broadband, said in a statement: "BT says broadband has landed, but cable has already taken off. Where consumers have a choice of provider, cable is winning."

Telewest's research began with a panel of 90,000 internet users. They filtered out everyone who didn't have broadband, and then filtered out everyone who either didn't live in a Telewest region or who couldn't get ADSL.

This left a total of 652 broadband users who could have chosen either ADSL or cable-based broadband, and Telewest says that 561 - 86 per cent - of these users had signed up with blueyonder.

BT, though, claims that more people are signing up for ADSL than for cable broadband, and casts doubt on the validity of Telewest's calculations.

A BT spokesman said: "Firstly - it's great that customers have such choice in broadband. However, new connections to broadband are running at about 20,000 a week according to Oftel - and of these the majority are DSL connections. We'd argue that Oftel's figures are possibly more meaningful than Telewest's convoluted workings."

Graeme Wearden writes for ZDNet.co.uk