"As a company reliant upon the performance of thousands of UK companies, we continuously monitor the usage levels and payment performance of our small business customers to ensure we spot any trends upon which we need to act," said Tony Eagleton, Finance Director of Unicom.
"The bottom line is that we had 263 customer insolvencies in the first 10 weeks of 2008, compared with 246 in the corresponding period of 2007 - growth of 6.9%
"However, this compares with growth in Unicom's invoiced customers from 56,189 in March 2007 to 68,860 in March 2008, i.e. 22.6%.
"In other words, the number of insolvencies has actually fallen as a proportion of our active customer base. This is good news on all fronts - less for small businesses to worry about and reduced bad debt costs for Unicom as we continue to generate rapid growth in customer numbers - every five minutes we see a business making the switch from BT to Unicom.
"We've been heading for recession for months now, according to some experts, but Unicom is seeing absolutely no sign of a downturn.