Broadband beats dial-up, as mobile revenues outstrip landlines
- Added:
- Jul 13, 2005
In its latest report, Ofcom attributed the rise to lower prices due to increased competition amongst ISPs and greater availability of high speed Web access.
The UK communications watchdog said there are now 8.1 million broadband connections in the UK, representing nearly 30% of all households and businesses. This compares with 7.5 million dial-up connections.
Ofcom said that at the end of 2002, a 512 KB connection typically cost £27 a month. Now, a 1 MB connection, nearly twice the speed, costs an average of £20 per month.
However, increasing competition in the broadband market means that while high-speed connections doubled in 2004, revenues for Internet service providers only increased by 6.8% overall.
In the phone market, Ofcom said that revenue form mobile phone voice and data services were up 16% to £12.3 at the end of 2004, surpassing fixed-line voice revenues for the first time, Ofcom said.
Revenues from traditional fixed-line voice services fell by 6.2% to £10.5bn from £11.2bn in 2003.
Meanwhile, Ofcom found that more than 60% of households now receive digital television via cable, satellite, or Freeview.
Ofcom predicted that by 2010 more people will watch television on the net through broadband than on an analogue TV.
In addition, sales of digital radio sets rose to 1.5m in early 2005, with about 8% of all readio listening coming from DAB digital radio receivers, streaming Internet radio or digital radio delivered to TV sets.
