BPN 1199 Dutch broadband market drops to 1,1 per cent

The Dutch broadband market grew by only 1.1 percent during the second quarter of 2008, almost 50 percent less than during the first quarter, when the market grew by 2 percent, according to Telecompaper's quarterly update on the Dutch consumer broadband market. During the quarter, Dutch ISPs attracted 63,300 new broadband customers to reach a total 5.61 million on 30 June 2008. This represents the lowest quarterly net additions since Telecompaper started reporting on the Dutch broadband market in 2003. Year-on-year, the market grew by 6.6 percent with 345,000 net additions.

Cable and ADSL broadband penetration per household increased to 77.9 percent at the end of the second quarter, growing by 4.4 percentage points compared with the end of Q2 2007. Penetration per 100 inhabitants increased to 34.2 percent on 30 June 2008, compared with 32.2 percent on 30 June 2007. When including the FTTH connections and residential mobile broadband users, the broadband penetration per household reached 79.9 percent at end of Q2 2008, with the penetration per 100 inhabitants amounting to 35 percent.

Ziggo saw its customer base grow by 146,000 net additions during the second quarter to reach 1.388 million broadband customers on 30 June. This includes 139,000 former Orange Breedband (now Online) cable customers which Ziggo took over in May this year.

Internet van^ KPN has become the second largest broadband provider after the inclusion of the customer base from Planet, ending the quarter with 1.108 million^ DSL customers. However, during the quarter, Internet van^ KPN shedded 4,000 customers compared with the combined customer base of both ISPs at the end of the first quarter this year.

The third largest broadband ISP in the Netherlands is Het Net (also a^ KPN ISP) with 672,000^ DSL users at the end of the quarter, after adding 13,000 customers in Q2. At the same time its market share grew to 12 percent.

Cable ISP UPC's growth slowed down to 8,400 net additions in the second quarter, taking its total to 658,700 broadband customers on 30 June 2008. The slower growth means that UPC's market share stabilised at 11.7 percent.

Despite the decrease, the broadband market is expected to pick up during the last two quarters of the year and reach an annual growth of around 7 percent, reaching the milestone of 6 million broadband connections by the first half of 2009, a spokes person for Telecompaper said.

Blog posting Number: 1199

Tags: broadband