Carphone has opened nearly 150 new stores in the past three months

The figure, which stripped out the impact of sales from new stores, was "very good", the telecoms firm said.

Carphone is now the UK's third largest broadband provider with 2.2 million users after buying AOL's UK business.

Its own TalkTalk broadband arm has signed up 632,000 subscribers, of which 540,000 have now been connected.

Broadband competition

The retailer initially struggled to cope with the huge demand for the service after it launched in April, resulting in long waiting times for people to be connected.

But Carphone said it had made good progress in improving its customer service in recent weeks, enabling some of the backlog to be cleared.

It has faced fierce broadband competition from the likes of BT, Vodafone, BSkyB and Orange and costs associated with TalkTalk's launch pushed it to a �4.6m loss in the first six months of the year.

But the firm saw like-for-like retail profits rise 3% over the latest period, while overall sales rose 19% to �623m.

Carphone said the trading outlook for the business was good, driven by its particular business model and brand strength.

"Delivering profitable like-for-like growth after last year's very strong performance is a great achievement," said chief executive Charles Dunstone.