Britain's BT Group reported a better-than-expected 4 per cent rise in second-quarter profits today as it posted its third straight quarter of underlying sales growth.
Revenues at the former monopoly were boosted by a 36 per cent rise in "new-wave revenues" from areas such as broadband Internet and business computing - upon which BT is increasingly dependent as its traditional business declines.
"The 36 per cent growth of new wave revenues helped us deliver the best underlying revenue growth in almost three years," BT chief executive Mr Ben Verwaayen said in a statement. He added the group's broadband additions in the last six months equated to one new connection every 15 seconds.
BT's shares were up 0.4 per cent at 194 pence in early trading, valuing the company around £16.5 billion sterling.
BT said its traditional business continued to operate in a tough environment, as it continued to lose market share in its core voice-calls business to new entrants such as Carphone Warehouse and Centrica Communications' OneTel.
BT's estimated consumer market share fell 1 percentage point compared with the preceding quarter to around 65 per cent, while the estimated business market share declined by 0.5 per cent age points to around 42 per cent.
Revenue rose 1 per cent to £4.602 billion, including the impact of mobile termination rate cuts, which represent charges on calls made from BT lines to mobiles that it passes on to mobile operators. Revenues were up 2 per cent excluding the termination rate cuts.
BT said it had 3.3 million broadband end users at the end of September with a record 607,000 connections added in the second quarter. BT's own share of the net DSL (digital subscriber line) additions rose to 30 per cent from 29 per cent in the preceding quarter.
The company proposed an interim dividend of 3.9 pence a share, up 22 per cent on a year earlier.