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Analysis from Point Topic’s recent broadband surveys* shows that consumers are, or at least believe they are, getting closer to the advertised speed of their service

800,000 workplaces want more bandwidth

Point Topic's new broadband data shows saturation taking increasing effect.

The dominance of WiFi for mobile internet (MI) access on the move has been ended according to the most recent analysis from Point Topic.

Sky continues to demonstrate it is the ISP best placed to grow its market share in difficult times.

The voices calling for a next-generation access (NGA) strategy for Britain have been getting louder over the past 12 months.

Fixed line broadband faces a significant challenge from mobile, something that has been common knowledge for some time. The scale of the threat is now clearer.

This Analysis Report covers some of the main results of the “offline” part of Point Topic’s Mobile Internet Survey 2*.

Internet retailing hits harder times - or not? There is a real mystery about shopping online.

At first glance the UK’s broadband numbers for the first quarter of 2008 look shocking.

Point Topic forecasts that there will be 17.4 million broadband lines in the UK by the end of 2008, and 21.4 million by the end of 2012.

The most recent BBUS Consumer Survey* reveals a shifting pattern of service take-up not only in broadband but in the bundled elements that operators are offering alongside their basic access packages.

2007 was the year of unbundling in the UK

Consumer Survey 5, 6000 respondents in Jan 2008, is the latest in Point Topic's BBUS series of surveys. This report is based on our analysis of the data from that survey.

The most striking broadband number for the fourth quarter of 2007 is the growth of Sky's subscriber numbers

Social networking epidemic infects the young

Point Topic has applied the technique of cluster analysis to identify six distinctive groups or clusters of mobile internet users in the data from the Mobile Internet Survey carried out in May 2007.

The UK is one of the most liberalised telecommunications markets in the world.

At last, some of the smaller UK ISPs are getting to grips with the data usage problem.

Point Topic estimates there were 1,590,000 business broadband lines in the UK as at 30 September 2007

Public debate is increasingly focused on broadband speeds.

The third quarter of 2007 showed rather better results for broadband than earlier indications suggested.

Web 2.0 traffic changes the rules

The third quarter of 2007 was bad for the UK broadband industry.

BT today announced its decision to collaborate with Spanish Operator FON in an attempt to create the world’s largest Wi-Fi community

If you talk to users of mobile broadband in the UK some are concerned about poor coverage, some about small screens and fiddly keypads, some about the intrusion of always being on call - but mostly what they worry about is the cost.

Analysis from Point Topic’s most recent broadband consumer survey* has revealed that residential UK internet users are spending more time online.

The good news in LLU (local-loop unbundling) is in looking forward rather than back. Like the rest of the broadband industry it had a bad quarter in April-June 2007

We have already seen that laptops are still the most popular way of accessing the internet on the move.

Mobile internet can offer a big growth opportunity. This is clear from Point Topic’s first Mobile Broadband research programme, carried out in partnership with YouGov.

Dial-up users are disappearing fast. We estimate that over 1.4 million internet-access homes have dropped dial-up in the last six months,

Somebody is going to miss their targets for local-loop unbundling in the next few months.

Sky Broadband was the only ISP to show a big increase in market share in the first quarter of 2007.

The UK is about to see rapid growth in mobile broadband services according to the latest research from YouGov and Point Topic*.

As the OTA announces there are now more than 2.25 million unbundled lines in the UK analysis from Point Topic’s Consumer Survey 3 and BroadBand Neighbourhood services covering all subscribers in LLU and non-LLU exchanges highlights the value of bundled se

BT's Mobility and Convergence team, led by Steve Andrews, has been pushing out a string of converged products and services over the past 18 months or so.

As BT prepares to move up a gear in the rollout of its 21st Century Network it’s clear that it will radically change the competitive scene in the UK broadband market.

Broadband on the move is becoming increasingly important in the UK. As users familiarise themselves with the services enabled by broadband, demand is increasing to have access to their online lives wherever they are, in business as well as day-to-day lif

Today Point Topic publishes a new version of its "BroadBand Layer” database, V5 for short, which provides the most accurate and detailed picture available of broadband take-up in the UK at 31 Dec 2006.

Two short pieces this week on Broadband universal service an EU requirement and TalkTalk's LLU backlog

In this paper we look at what differences there are between customers who are on LLU lines as opposed to those who aren't.

One of BT Openreach’s biggest problems in the first year of its existence has been the sheer volatility of demand for its services.

According to the latest survey* by Point Topic 12% of UK businesses have changed ISP in the last 6 months and 23% are 'very' or 'fairly' likely to do so in the next 6 months.

BT Wholesale is living up to the claims it made for its potential DSL performance a year ago

Edition 73 of the UK Broadband View (broadband monitor as was)

First analysis from Business Broadband Survey 2

A universal service requirement for next-generation access to broadband (NGA) and public sector support to make it happen are both clearly on the agenda with publication of a new report from the Broadband Stakeholder Group.

The UK government has been showing signs of getting it's online wriggle on recently.

Point Topic’s analysis of local-loop unbundling (LLU) in the UK at end-2006 shows that the first half of 2007 will probably be the peak period of growth for ordinary unbundling.

Online access to business software is the most popular application for broadband workplaces in the UK

With users increasingly unhappy with their ISPs according to the Point Topic BBUS survey series

60%+ of UK households have some form of internet access and with increasing churn levels that's quite a number of clients in play.

According to Point Topic's broadband consumer research (BroadBand Consumer Survey 3 - Dec 06) consumers spend 65% more time online than they used to

In December 2005, the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked Andrew Gowers (ex editor of the FT and currently at Lehman Brothers) to conduct an independent review into the UK Intellectual Property Framework.

The latest analysis from Point Topic's Business Survey 1, conducted in Q206, was published earlier this month.

The last quarter of 2006 was when Carphone Warehouse, and to a lesser extent Sky, finally made a dint in the market share of virtually every other ISP

At the annual Macworld Expo in San Francisco earlier this week, Apple introduced its iPhone, combining three products - a mobile phone,

The number of broadband lines in the UK reached 13.1 million by the end of 2006.

There could soon be another radical change in the broadband landscape, thanks to Ofcom’s current Wholesale Broadband Access Market Review.

The September quarter of 2006 was an improvement on the June quarter for the broadband market, but still showed broadband growth much slower than it was a year ago

Sky satellite TV reigns alone in a market of 3.6 million households, a new research by Point Topic’s Broadband User Service (BBUS) reveals.

Swindon is keeping its lead as the most broadband place in Britain, according to a new Point Topic research.

Local loop unbundling (LLU) is gaining momentum in the UK, with half of UK households currently within reach of a LLU-enabled exchange.

Consumer confidence has returned to the UK broadband market in Q3 2006 after the lowest quarterly growth rate ever in the previous quarter.

When ntl and Telewest completed their merger in March 2006, ntl:Telewest Business became the third biggest business service provider in the UK, after BT and Cable & Wireless. It accounts for about 20 per cent of the group’s business, and has now 2,200 emp

The proportion of non-access households which think it is not important to have home access to the internet (74.6%) seems to be increasing as those who are interested get switched on, leaving the standouts behind. The proportion of no-access households wh

Local-loop unbundling is finally starting to achieve the roll-out rates needed to make it a major force in the UK broadband market.

Nearly two-thirds of UK households will have a broadband connection in two years, with broadband penetration reaching levels of up to 90% in some areas

Earlier this year, the UK saw a WiMAX service for business be launched in Westminster.

Supposing your data connection failed for a whole working day, how disruptive would that be? Surprisingly, a large part of the businesses in the UK wouldn’t mind too much.

An impressive 91% of internet households are very satisfied or fairly satisfied with the quality and reliability of their home services,

Judging by progress in July and August, most local-loop unbundlers are likely to fall far short of the ambitious targets announced earlier this year

Carphone Warehouse’s ‘free’ broadband service, announced in April 2006, started a revolution in the UK internet scene.

Data just published by BT Retail gives the first definitive view of regional take-up of broadband by businesses across the UK.

Soaring house prices in London and its metropolitan area have forced long-distance commuting to become the norm for thousand of employees

Seventy-six percent of all internet households use the internet for ‘entertainment and leisure’, shows Consumer Survey 2* of Point Topic’s BroadBand User Service.

LLU rollout and commitments at the end of June show that LLU still overwhelmingly favours London. The huge variation in LLU coverage between regions threatens to become another digital divide issue.

The quarter from April to June this year seems to have been the worst three months for broadband in Britain for the past two years.

How people spend their time online is the result of a complex interaction between technological constraints, educational background, individual choice, demographic characteristics and income.

Symmetric broadband can make a big difference for home offices and small to medium-sized businesses.

The new players are plunging in aggressively. The old established ones are being much more cautious.

The internet company Pipex enters the cut-price war with the launch of a new broadband service for £6.50.

Easynet was established in 1994, with £50,000 of its founders’, David Rowe and Keith Teare, savings.

The market for consumer broadband value-added services (BVAS) performed well during 2005.

The take-up of telephone services and television products is a distinctive sign of media-positive households.

The great majority of UK workplaces now have at least one data connection, indicates Point Topic’s first Business Survey. Results show that the proportion of workplaces with no data connections at all drops from almost 30% for the very smallest sites

Point Topic’s latest Consumer Survey brings critical information to the understanding of internet users in the UK – and, as we show here, to the potential users as well.

Point Topic’s latest broadband user analysis, published this week, provides important detail on the shape of the Internet access market.

Point Topic has just published a detailed analysis of take-up* of DSL lines as reported by BT for the end of Q1 and Q4 2005 by BT area

About a month ago in our review of the Q4 05 ISP market shares we referred to the ‘sleeping giants’ of the industry; those we expected to make big gains on the broadband scene this year.

The second wave of Point Topic’s survey of the UK residential internet and broadband user survey, BBUS CS2, was completed in mid February.

The announcement of the full year results from NTL and Telewest brings the total number of broadband lines in the UK to 9.826 million.

The two big numbers which make up the UK DSL market are now in.

Offering access alone to a market of less 1% of the population is not a viable business for satellite and wireless operators

With last Friday’s news that AOL UK has finally decided to invest in unbundling exchanges, the last big kick which LLU needs for significant growth

The launch of Openreach on 11th January was notable rather as the first milestone in BT's undertakings to Ofcom rather than any new revelations.

The November statement from the Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA), has been widely quoted over the past few weeks: 163,000 LLU lines, run rates of 5,000 lines a week and Right First Time (RFT) rates of 90%.

The figures in the graph below represent Point Topic’s final version of the UK ISP market share numbers for Q3.

On 10th November, Be held a party at Tower Bridge to mark, officially, the launch of the service.

No singular vision about how the home will be connected

Following the recent spate of announcements concerning SDSL tariff reductions, Point Topic conducted some simple research to compare rates being offered by a number of niche players and BT Retail.

Point Topic continues its segmentation analysis of UK broadband and internet users, by examining a group which is particularly interesting, because, as a group it is more ‘internet savvy’,

The table below shows Point Topic’s best estimate at 20th September, of the subscriber bases of known UK ISPs.

In the last issue we looked at the results of the BBUS consumer sector survey, from the point of view of homeworking.

The market for products aimed at those working from home constitutes a significant opportunity for broadband services, Point Topic's first Broadband User Survey confirms

Internet take-up in the UK is already higher than usually assumed.

This profile was the result of an interview conducted at Zen’s Rochdale (Moss Bridge Rd) headquarters, with Stuart Birchall, CTO.

At an ISPA networking event, held at Manchester Airport on 9th June, ISPs and guests had the opportunity to quiz an invited panel on any subject they wanted.

This profile is based on an interview with Dominic Crolla, Managing Director of Pipex Internet, at Pipex’s Welwyn Garden City offices on 2nd June.

The table below shows Point Topic’s best estimate at 30th May, of the subscriber bases of known UK ISPs.

BT Wholesale and the cable operators have now published subscriber numbers for Q1 2005 and a firm idea of the number of LLU lines in operation is available courtesy of the Telecoms Adjudicator.

The Building on Broadband Britain conference to which UKBBMM 4 alluded provided a platform for a number of county councils to report on the progress of local initiatives aimed at addressing ‘the digital divide’ or ‘e-exclusion’.

This profile is based on an interview with Mark Lang, founder of Eclipse Internet, Luke Lang, Marketing Manager and Maria Sellors and Paul Nickerson of Kingston Communications at Eclipse's Exeter offices on 6th April.

BroadBand Neighbourhood uses the mass of data now available from government and independent sources to estimate the take-up of broadband by geographical area across the UK – although current outputs cover only England and Wales.

Point Topic’s best estimate at 15th March 2005, of the subscriber bases of known UK ISPs.

On 3rd February 2005, BT published its response to phase 2 of Ofcom's strategic review of the UK telecommunications industry. The date of the response coincided with the closure of the consultation on phase 2. The central plank of the response is that the