The Dutch broadband market numbered more than six million subscribers at the end of December 2009, writes Telecompaper.

The total number of connections stood at 6.06 million at that date, up 1.3% (or 77.000) quarter-on-quarter. DSL continues to be the most popular access technology, accounting for 3.535 million of the total, albeit that the number of xDSL-based lines dipped 0.2%, or 7,100 lines, in Q4, while the number of cable modem-based subscriptions rose 2.8% to 2.358 million.

The net addition of 63,700 cable broadband lines in the period under review helped push the platform’s share of the pie up 0.6 percentage points to 38.9% by the year end. Despite the continued dominance of the two technologies, strong uptake was recorded for FTTx connections which doubled to 2.8% of the market by end-2009. By the start of 2010 broadband penetration per household in the Netherlands reached 58.3%, up 2.3% year-on-year, while penetration by population stood at 36.6%, up from 35.4% previously.

KPN’s retail arm was the largest broadband provider in the country by end-2009, with 1.83 million DSL customers – bolstered by the inclusion of former Het Net customers. As at 31 December, KPN’s market share was 30.2%, up from 19.4%, ahead of cablecos Zesko Holding (Ziggo) with 1.447 million customers, a market share of 23.9%, and UPC Nederland with 741,700 customers, a 12.2% market share. As a result of the demise of Het Net, Tele2 became the fourth largest broadband ISP in the country by subscribers with 398,500 DSL customers, a market share of 6.6%.