Amy's i: CABLE WINS A BROAD APPEAL.

Byline: AMY VICKERS

BT may have been hogging all the broadband limelight of late but quietly, in the wings, NTL and Telewest have been biding their time, ready to make a big noise about broadband themselves.

This could well be that time.

New figures show cable broadband has soared ahead of BT's ADSL, with nearly half a million people subscribing either to an NTL or a Telewest's broadband package.

NTL is the biggest with 300,000 broadband customers, compared to 192,000 Telewest Blueyonder subscribers.

Overall, that's 172,000 more than BT, which has 320,000 subscribers: 170,000 subscribers through BT Openworld, and 150,000 through third party ISPs like Freeserve or Pipex buying wholesale BT broadband.

Why is it proving popular? Because it's cheap - NTL's cheapest is pounds 14.99, but the catch is the speed (only 128k per second) and you also have to subscribe to another NTL service, such as TV or phone.

Telewest's cheapest is pounds 25 (same cross-subscription rules apply) but at least this is 512k (proper broadband speed), and NTL does a similar speed for the same price.

Adding Hull-based telecoms firm Kingston's 11,000 subscribers, takes the UK up to 823,000 broadband connections - an astonishing difference compared to this time last year.