Punters are queuing up to leave BT, according to internal documents seen by the Sunday Times. More than 150,000 punters are leaving the UK's dominant fixed line telco each month and this number could accelerate as competition hots up, it reports.

Many customers are lured away to rival providers such as Tesco, The Carphone Warehouse, One.Tel and Tele2 - which claim to be able to save people money on their BT phone bill.

This exodus appears to jar, somewhat, with BT's current advertising campaign that brags just how many people are "coming back" to BT. For while BT is only too willing to say that 100,000 customers returned to the company last month, it has so far declined a number of requests to say how many people left.

This should become clearer on Thursday when BT publishes its latest round of financial figures.

Asked to comment on the story, a spokeswoman for the monster telco said BT made no secret that it was losing customers slowly. "Some people are leaving," she said, "some people are coming back." ®

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