BT's broadband division will be lapping up the champagne as the company reveals a massive increase in new broadband subscribers between October and December.
That brings BT's total broadband customer base up to a cool 5,529,000.
According to BT Group's latest financial results, the quarter ending December 31st saw the largest single increase in new customers for eight years and gave the provider a market share of 53%.
The previous quarter also saw a substantial increase of 114,000 subscribers, not bad for a provider that has been synonymous with iffy broadband deals and poor service in the minds of consumers over the past few years.
Turnaround
Shareholders will undoubtedly also be delighted by the news that BT Wholesale has finally managed to reverse its decline in broadband lines. Figures for the last quarter showed an increase of 9,000, making a total of nearly eight million.
BT's seemingly unstoppable triumph doesn't end there.
Sales of unbundled (LLU) telephone lines are also up by 347,000 for the last quarter, taking the total to 7,490,000.
The group's broadband television service, BT Vision, attracted 40,000 customers in the same period, compared to the previous quarter's increase of 24,000.
In all, analysts predicted that the three month to December 31st would see pre-tax profits of £495 million.
The actual figure stands at £530m.
Ian Livingston, BT's CEO, said: "Profits and cash flow in the quarter were ahead of last year. BT Retail had a good quarter with growth in business revenues and our highest share of DSL broadband net additions for eight years...
"These results show that we are making progress on a number of fronts. There is always more to do but our performance underpins our outlook for this year and the period to 2012/13."
What about fibre?
Absent from BT's financial stats is any mention of its Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) superfast broadband service.
BT Infinity currently offers broadband speeds of up to 40Mb by delivering a fibre optic line to users' street cabinets and then deploying a "last mile" broadband service to homes through the use of VDSL2 technology.
Results from the third quarter showed that BT Retail had attracted 38,000 FTTC customers and was increasing their numbers by around 4,000 per week.
Forward-thinking BT also plans to roll-out its Fibre-to-the-Home/Premises (FTTH/P) service in the near future. This will see cable delivered directly into homes and premises via pure fibre optic lines, which handle pulses of light that can be converted into data.
This could potentially enable speeds of up to 110Mb.
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