We’ve just published our European Broadband Tracker for Q3, focusing this month on the happenings in the UK market—a market that witnessed a significant change in landscape in the third quarter.  With its acquisition of Tiscali for a “fire sale price,” Carphone Warehouse now finds itself in the number two slot in the UK.  Three providers in the market now claim over 4 million subscribers; however, BT Retail still maintains a commanding 780,000 subscriber lead ahead of its nearest competitor. 

Sky remains the fastest growing broadband service provider in the UK, though the company’s quarterly growth has slowed down from double digits a year ago to half of that this quarter. Nonetheless, Sky is poised to potentially approach three million subscribers by the end of 2010.

While Orange’s subscriber loss in the UK market persists, we believe that the impending Orange and T-Mobile merger—reported to be on fast track from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) –could potentially help to stave off further subscriber churn, through a combination of multiplay bundling and innovative service deployments.

Indeed, we  expect to see accelerated M&A activity in the UK market in the upcoming year, with Carphone Warehouse a potential acquisition target.

                                                                                    Source: Strategy Analytics, Multiplay Market Dynamics