Carphone Warehouse revealed slowing growth in the broadband market yesterday by announcing it will halve its target for new broadband customers this year.

The group was forced to cut April’s forecast of 400,000 new customers by next March to between 200,000 and 250,000, blaming a slowdown in consumer spending and the drop in house sales as fewer people move house and change telecoms provider.

The mobile phone retailer and internet provider said that its share of new customers slowed to only 41,000 in the three months to the end of June, compared with 126,000 during the same period last year.

Charles Dunstone, the chief executive, said that he remained “understandably cautious about the consumer environment.

Mr Dunstone also highlighted the increasing popularity of mobile broadband “dongles”, which give customers broadband speeds for their laptops while on the move, as another factor squeezing customer additions.

Europe’s biggest independent mobile phone retailer was also forced to lower its forecast for fixed-line revenue growth from between 4 and 5 per cent to broadly flat revenue growth.

Despite the slowdown, with 2.8 million customers, Carphone remains the third-largest broadband provider in the UK, behind BT and Virgin Media.

Orange, the mobile phone provider, also added to the telecoms sector’s woes. The group, owned by France Telecom, said that it had lost 40,000 broadband subscribers in the UK, the third quarter it has registered a fall.

Others in the sector have managed to buck the trend.

BSkyB, which reported results yesterday, beat analysts’ expectations by adding 200,000 new broadband customers. With 1.6 million customers, it is the UK’s fourth-largest internet service provider.

Likewise, BT added 103,000 new broadband customers in its second quarter, taking more than 30 per cent of market share for the six successive quarter. However, the figure is a steep drop on 150,000 customers added in the previous quarter and 126,000 in the same period last year.

Carphone Warehouse’s shares closed down 3.7p at 189.1p.

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