UK broadband take-up doubles

Three per cent of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the UK have signed up to broadband, according to the latest stats from telecoms regulator Oftel.

According to Oftel, 8 per cent of businesses that currently access the Internet do so by using a DSL or cable modem connection - that's around 3 per cent of all SMEs.

On the home front, around 6 per cent of users with Net access use broadband to get online.

Throw it all together and what have you got? Well, at the end of June it seems 709,000 people and businesses in the UK were accessing the Net using broadband.

Cable modem access continues to lead the way with 419,000 end users by the middle of June.

DSL is still lagging behind with some 290,000 punters using the technology to access the Internet.

Oftel reckons the take-up of broadband in the UK is growing substantially with the number of broadband users more than doubling since the end of last year.

Which is nice...if you live within a spit of a BT exchange or cable franchise. ®