The first quarterly results from the Carphone Warehouse indicates an addition of 126,000 new customers to its broadband division thus making its broadband customer base to reach 2.4 million by the end of June this year.

Total connections rose nearly 20 percent to 2.3 million while its 966,000 customers were shifted to unbundled lines during the last quarter. It is reported that 40 percent of the total customers are now on unbundled lines.

The company's customer base comprising voice-only customers slipped a bit with a loss of 91,000 customers while the number of voice with broadband customers remained unchanged at 2.7 million. As far as the unbundling of exchanges are concerned, there were 1,247 TalkTalk which were fully unbundled while 465 partially unbundled exchanges belonged to AOL.

As far as the earnings are concerned, the Carphone Warehouse saw year-on-year revenue growth of 11.7 percent and the company recorded revenues of £706m by the end of the first quarter. Likewise, the revenues from fixed lines stood at £345m up by nearly 50 percent. Retail gross profit rose 3.6 percent as of 30, June 2007.

Charles Dunstone, Chief Executive Officer of Carphone Warehouse said:

"We have started the year well. The Retail business is enjoying good growth and we continue to take market share. Our broadband operations are making good progress, with the levels of sales and migrations giving excellent visibility of future profitability".

Regarding the trends in UK broadband industry and the company's future plans, he said:
"Customer demand for broadband and wireless solutions for the home is still increasing. With the further enhancements to our broadband services we are planning over the coming months, such as our new partnership with Dell, we are excited about the future."

Carphone Warehouse owns AOL and TalkTalk, two major broadband suppliers that offer bundled services including broadband and telephone services. Recently AOL announced a special offer of free lap top for its new customers just immediately after a similar offer floated by another UK broadband provider, Orange.