London the busiest internet hub

The UK has the busiest internet hub on the planet. A statement from the London Internet Exchange (Linx) this week says that the facility in London's Docklands now handles 55 gigabits of traffic - or 55,000,000,000 bits - per second.

This puts the hub - for a long time one of the world's busiest - ahead of similar facilities in the US and Japan. Linx was founded 10 years ago by five UK ISPs.

At the same time, the latest research from Baskerville estimates that the UK passed the five-million broadband lines mark during September.

The figures show around 50,000 premises in the UK are getting broadband every week. Of the five-million figure, three million are using DSL, meaning the other two million are using other technologies, mainly cable modem-based broadband from suppliers NTL and Telewest.

Very few DSL users who buy from suppliers other than BT are benefiting from unbundling of local exchanges. Only around 13,000 subscribers buy a service that their provider doesn't simply get from BT Wholesale.

This is against 730,000 who take advantage of unbundling in France, Baskerville pointed out in a research note.

By the end of next year, there are expected to be around eight million UK broadband connections.