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Ben Verwaayen, BT’s chief executive, insisted that the push into the internet calls business was not a defensive move. “We have embraced VoIP since day one,” he said.

He said that, given the number of new broadband competitors, BT retail’s market share of new customers in the quarter — 30 per cent of net broadband additions, down from 31 per cent in the previous quarter — was more than people would have expected.

BT’s pre-tax profit in the quarter was up 24 per cent to £639 million on revenues up 3 per cent to £4.86 billion. Revenue in its global services unit, which offers IT and telecoms services to businesses, was up 4 per cent to £2.16 billion.

Carphone Warehouse said yesterday that it had signed up 476,000 customers to its “free” broadband product.

QUALITY ADVANCES WITH ADVENT OF HIGH-SPEED BROADBAND

IN ITS early days, the uptake of internet phone call technology was hampered not only by low broadband penetration but by the quality of the service.

The excitement of calling a relative across the world for free rapidly waned when it transpired that the call was crackly and often cut out.

Chris Williams, at uSwitch, the telecoms price comparison service, said that things had changed. “Today, as broadband speeds have increased and the service has been refined, the sound quality of calls is generally very good.”

However drawbacks with the service, currently used by about 500,000 people in the UK, remain.

Though VoIP services are generally promoted as “free”, most packages offer free calls only between users of the same service — with charges made for other calls. The charges vary between providers and depending on whether calls are to mobiles or are national and international calls.

Some services require the individual to sit at a PC and some require the PC to be permanently switched on.

Very few VoIP services will allow the user to make emergency calls.

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