Le Freeswerve takes swipe at Oftel report

Britain's biggest French ISP, Freeserve, has hit back at the results of an Oftel survey that showed its market share of UK home Net users had slumped to 18 per cent - just one point ahead of AOL UK.

In a statement Le Freeswerve rubbished Oftel's findings preferring instead to rely on Forrester Research, which showed the ISP's market share was 35 per cent.

Indeed, the findings of both surveys are so far apart it's almost impossible to believe which is correct - or even nearly correct.

Said Le Freeswerve: "The most recent survey from Forrester Research confirms Freeserve's UK ISP market share as 35 per cent.

"There are numerous studies into UK ISP market share and arguably none is satisfactory. The results of the various studies give different results due to differing survey questions, sample sizes, sampling and weighting techniques.

"What is consistent is that surveys for the last 3 months, consistently show Freeserve as the UK's number one ISP.

"In addition, Freeserve is the only UK ISP that publicly discloses our number of active registered accounts. It is interesting that none of our competitors choose to do this."

Le Freeswerve has a point. Indeed, this whole matter could be ended in a jiffy if only ISPs would publish their usage figures.

A spokeswoman for Le Freeswerve said it had 2.1 million active subscribers.

A spokeswoman for AOL UK said: "We don't publish our user figures." Ho hum. ®

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