The continued take-up of broadband and helped Europe's largest ISP, T-Online, to post better-than-expected results today.

Publishing numbers for the first half of the year, T-Online reported that income before taxes was €23 million ($26.13 million), compared with a loss of €130 million ($147.69 million) in the first six months of 2002.

Revenues increased from €731 million ($830.49 million) in H1 2002 to €894 million ($1.02 billion) - up around 22 per cent on the same period last year.

Part of this improvement is down to increased proportion of broadband customers (from 24 per cent in Q1 to 25 per cent in Q2) signing up for higher speed Net access.

T-Online has 3.01 million broadband customers compared to 2.19 million at the same time last year, an increase of 27 per cent.

In Germany, broadband punters make up around three in ten of its customers, the company said in a statement. ®