UK benefits from communications anytime, anywhere and at a lower cost

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

Ofcom today published its annual Communications Market Report 2007 which reveals new trends in the UK’s £50bn electronic communications sector.

The networked nation

The process of convergence – bringing technologies, platforms and devices closer together – is connecting the nation as never before. Consumers can now get live TV over their mobile, radio over their TV and make voice calls on the internet.

  • There is now an even greater range of ‘bundled’ communications services providing landline, broadband, digital television and mobile in a single package. As a result, the number of consumers taking services in bundles rose to 40% of the population by April 2007, up by a third over 12 months.
  • Digital television – in 80.5% per cent of UK homes by April 2007 – is changing what, when and how we watch. One of the new services being used by viewers in the 11.5 million subscription television households is high-definition (HD) television. The report finds that, in the 450,000 homes that have it, 33% of viewing time is spent watching in HD and 43% of those surveyed said that they watch more television – especially premium content such as films and sport – as a result of having HD.
  • And by April 2007, 15% of respondents said they had a digital video recorder (DVR), almost double the number at the end of 2006. DVRs allow users to record whole television series and to pause and rewind live programmes.

Links: Full Press Release; The Report