UK's Ofcom: The Communication Market 2005

Ofcom today [7/13/05] publishes research revealing changes in the communications sector as consumers and businesses adopt digital networks and formats with increasing enthusiasm.  ¶  In its second annual Communications Market report, Ofcom has identified a range of new trends in broadband, digital broadcasting and other communications services. These include:

More broadband

• For the first time, there are now more households with broadband than dial-up internet connections. 2005 was the year in which broadband became a genuinely mainstream consumer product, now present in almost 30% of all UK households and businesses and actively considered by many more.
• The number of new broadband connections per week has increased almost fifteen-fold in three years - from 5,500 per week in 2001 to 73,800 per week in 2004. This rapid acceleration in take-up has led to a (provisional) total of 8.1 million connections as of June 2005, more than double the number of connections at the end of 2003. B y the end of 2005, 99.6% of UK homes will be connected to a broadband-enabled exchange.
• Average broadband connection speeds are also increasing. At the end of 2002, a 512kps connection typically cost £27 a month; as a result of greater competition between providers, a 1 Mbps connection now costs £20 a month.
• The combination of mass-market appeal, rapid growth, falling prices, increasing connection speeds and innovation in video technology means that by 2010, the number of households able to view television over broadband is likely to exceed the number of households dependent on analogue terrestrial broadcasts for all their television viewing.

More digital

• More than 60% of UK households now receive digital television; and every month more than 250,000 households - more than the number of households of a city the size of Sheffield - switch on to digital for the first time or add set-top boxes for additional televisions in the home. 70% of that growth in 2004 was driven by Freeview; by the end of 2004, almost 20% of households (4.6 million) received digital television via Freeview alone.
• In radio, 36% of adults with access to digital television have at some point listened to radio via their sets (up from 29% in 2003) and 19% of adults with internet connections have listened to radio online (up from 15% in 2003). DAB digital radio continues to expand. By the autumn of 2003, 250,000 DAB sets had been sold; by Q1 2005, that figure increased five-fold to 1.5 million.

More mobile

• Total revenues for the mobile telecoms industry now exceed those of fixed-line calls and access as consumer usage of mobile increases, encouraged by price reductions and the emergence of new services. Between 2000 and 2004, the total number of minutes spent making mobile calls in the UK almost doubled (from 34 billion minutes to 62 billion). During the same period, minutes spent making calls over traditional fixed-line networks fell by 6% (from 174 billion minutes to 164 billion). As a consequence, b etween 2003 and 2004, mobile telecoms revenues increased by 16% to £12.3 billion. Revenues from traditional fixed-line voice services fell by 6.2% to £10.5bn from £11.2bn in 2003.

Links:  Ofcom press release.  Ofcom: The Communications Market 2005.