Months of build-up culminated this week in the U.K., with the people of Britain finally making their voices heard.
Bitter rivals gave no quarter to one another, and every trick in a well-thumbed book has been used to sway the public in one direction or the other.
Now, finally, after a long and hard-fought campaign, and after spending vast sums of money, the country finally found out who currently holds the balance of power…in the U.K.’s consumer telecoms market.
Just like a certain other popularity contest this week, there was a clear winner in the form of the incumbent, BT.
The telco’s retail broadband customer base swelled by 121,000 in the first three months of 2015 to reach 7.7 million. Retail fibre connections increased by 266,000 to 3.3 million.
"We delivered our best ever performance for fibre connections in the [fiscal] fourth quarter," said BT chief executive Gavin Patterson, in a statement on Thursday.
By comparison, Virgin Media revealed on Friday it added 27,100 broadband customers in the U.K., giving it an overall base of 4.6 million, still some way behind BT. It no doubt hopes its recently-announced Project Lightning plan to build out its network will help it close the gap.
Sandwiched in the middle is Sky, which counts its U.K. and Irish customer bases together. The company ended March with approximately 5.53 million broadband subscribers.
Value player TalkTalk is due to publish its quarterly results next week. Its broadband and fixed-voice base has been slowly creeping up: it ended 2014 with 3.7 million customers, up from 3.5 million a year earlier.
However, BT still has plenty of catching up to do in the TV market, where it has made some big bets on premium sports content to tempt prospective customers.
BT’s TV subscriber base grew by 52,000 to 1.4 million, and Patterson said the company’s BT Sport channels, which are bundled free with its fixed broadband service, are now in 5.2 million homes.
It seems to be paying off, but Virgin and Sky TV still hold a commanding lead, with 3.75 million and 16.3 million customers respectively. BT may have edged ahead of TalkTalk though, which ended last year with 1.3 million TV subscribers.
As previously mentioned, BT has made some huge investments in content to defend its broadband position and take on fierce rival Sky in the TV market.
The increasingly important role that content plays in defining competition in the telco U.K.’s telco market is one of the themes explored in the upcoming edition of Total Telecom+.
In addition, Total Telecom’s Connected Britain event will take place in London on 16-17 June. Expert speakers from the industry and public sector will be there to explore the challenges and opportunities inherent to expanding the coverage and capabilities of the U.K.’s telco networks. They will also discuss how this week’s general election result will shape the industry over the coming five years.
