The United Kingdom, one of the laggards in Europe when it comes to superfast broadband, has finally passed the two million subscription mark or roughly 10 percent of the UK’s fixed lines, according to broadband research firm, Point Topic. Their data shows that UK superfast broadband has downstream bandwidth of over 25Mbps. [What speed you actually get at home is a whole different thing, but that’s a story for another day.]

Cable broadband along with Copper/Fiber hybrid broadband technologies are taking market share away from the plain old DSL, a trend that has gained momentum in US over the past few years. Of the total 21.3 million fixed broadband lines, there are 16.3 million that use old broadband technologies. The UK during the “first half of 2012 saw the tipping point where DSL, for the first time, started to lose subscribers overall,” Point Topic notes.

During the second quarter of 2012, The UK added a mere 175,000 new subscribers. However, more than 600,000 new superfast subscribers signed up. Virgin Media and BT are two of the biggest “superfast” broadband service providers in the country. Europe wants to go all “superfast” by 2020. Countries like the Netherlands, Sweden and many emerging European economies such as Estonia are far ahead of the UK in terms of superfast broadband offerings and penetration, though the UK government wants to offer best broadband in Europe by 2015.