THE UK is about to leapfrog France to become Europe’s biggest provider of broadband internet access, marking a milestone in the take-up of the high-speed service.

Research from PointTopic, the broadband research firm, suggests that by Sunday the UK will have 9.8 million broadband lines, narrowly scraping past France’s expected 9.7 million. Germany will have 9.1 million lines.

The study forecasts that Britain, which added nearly 2.8 million broadband lines in the first nine months of this year alone, should power further ahead this year as local-loop unbundling (LLU) — a process aimed at increasing competition and lowering prices — begins to take off in earnest.

Britain had a notoriously slow start with the “always-on” internet technology. While countries like France and Germany pushed the service initially, BT, the country’s biggest telecoms provider, was tentative about promoting it.

The country was also late to introduce LLU, by which BT’s competitors install their equipment in telephone exchanges and offer their own services, compared with thier European counterparts. At the end of September there were more than 2.5 million unbundled lines in France but only 122,000 in the UK.

Under Ben Verwaayen, chief executive of BT, broadband has been pushed heavily both by BT and through its wholesale offerings for competitors.

As competition has surged — there are now more than 100 suppliers — and prices have come down, its popularity has taken off.

Now, according to Ofcom, about 250,000 households are signing up for broadband each month — equivalent to the population of Sheffield.

Ofcom, regarding LLU as the key to the success of broadband in Britain, has cut what BT can charge competitors for access to exchanges. PointTopic said that that should stimulate major investment by competitors and make next year the “year of unbundling”.

The group estimates that as many as one million unbundled lines could be reached as soon as the third quarter of next year.

Other major changes, including further freeing up of BT’s network and the tie-up of NTL and Telewest, the cable companies, should also help to drive growth, the study says.

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