BT and Virgin losing thousands of customers

Telecoms giants BT and Virgin are both losing thousands of customers, according to the companies' results released this week.

BT's results from today showed the company had lost around 125,000 active consumer line customers this quarter, compared to the previous three months. To run BT services, users need to have an active consumer line.

This quarter, BT had 10.323 million active consumer lines, compared to 10.448 million in the previous quarter. BT has been seeing declines in this area for some time losing 609,000 over the past year.

Virgin, despite seeing sales rise two per cent, saw 36,000 cable broadband customers leaving over the last quarter. In more positive news for the ISP, it saw revenue rise 2.2 per cent.

Business revenue was up six per cent for the first half year but was relatively flat for the second quarter.

BT claimed for every customer that deserted Virgin in the last quarter, 20 joined BT.

BT boasts opositive results anyway

Regardless of the drop in active consumer line customers, BT reported profit before tax was up 20 per cent, whilst its share of DSL broadband net additions stood at 56 per cent.

It added 141,000 retail broadband customers over the quarter. Broadband is the sector BT says it is placing most emphasis on.

"We continue to make progress towards delivering our financial, operational and growth goals," said BT chief executive (CEO) Ian Livingston.

"Our superfast broadband network has now passed over 5 million premises and the customer base has almost trebled in the last six months. BT Global Services is making further progress in high growth economies and secured its largest ever contract in Latin America."

However, BT saw its Retail division post another quarter of revenue decline the ninth in a row.