http://pictures.directnews.co.uk/liveimages/BT_1071_18985592_0_0_7024549_100.jpg

BT will need to fight hard this year to maintain its dominant market position, it has been said.

Thomas Newton of Broadband-Finder.co.uk commented that BT's original Home Hub was a success for the company, while previous hub giveaway deals have been popular also.

However, as other companies move in on the market, such as Virgin Media with its 50Mbps broadband, BT will have to fight to beat off the competition, according to Mr Newton.

The expert also pointed to Be Broadband's trial of double-bonded ADSL2+ lines that was performing well.

He added that customers will be attracted to the fact that BT has recently included "0870 and 0845 numbers into their Evenings & Weekends and Anytime phone plans".

Mr Newton's comments come after the Telecommunications Market Data Update Q2 2008 from Ofcom revealed that the amount of residential and SME broadband connections rose by more than 400,000 over the quarter.

This meant that there were a total of 16.6 million connections, with BT's retail share of these connections standing at 26.5 per cent.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.