UK broadband sales soaring

Sales of DSL broadband in the UK soared by 73 per cent to nearly 7.2 million subscribers during 2005.

The UK added just over 3 million new subscribers last year, making it the second fastest growing established DSL market. The UK is the sixth largest DSL subscriber in the world. China leads the way with over 26 million subscribers.

The figures, just released by the DSL Forum, show that around the world 122,000 people signed up to DSL broadband every day last year. In all, 41 million new subscribers abandoned their creaky old dial up modems for some serious bandwidth.

Overall, the EU market more than doubled in 2005 to 48.2 million DSL subscribers, where the UK sits third, behind Germand and France.

At 35 per cent of the world total, this makes the EU is the largest subscriber by region.