Key points from the Ofcom UK Communications Market Review 2008
15 Aug 2008
Negotiating your way through the mammoth Ofcom UK Communications Market Review 2008 is a long old slog. Its exhaustive detail takes you through all aspects of the world of telecommunications and our relationship to it, while divulging some genuinely interesting – and sometimes surprising – statistics. Here we examine the key findings of the survey, and what they mean to you.
In telecoms terms, the stand-out statistic is that mobile telephony (including an estimate for messaging) accounted for 40% of the total time spent using telecoms services. And while this is a huge upswing from the 25% recorded in 2002, the real story is how it has achieved such an increase. The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that people are using mobiles rather than their landlines: but this isn’t actually the case. What’s actually driven the rise is an increase in the amount of minutes spent on all voice calls. Fixed-line calls, while down on the 2002 figures, still accounted for 148 billion minutes – suggesting Britain’s love affair with the home phone is far from over.
Prices for broadband and other telecom services fell once more, fixed line by 6% over the previous year. This reduction has been helped by the increase in availability of local loop unbundled (LLU) exchanges. Take-up of products offered by local loop unbundlers increased from 9% to 19% of lines in areas where LLU services are available. Furthermore, last year only 66% of homes had access to this often cheaper and quicker method of providing phone and broadband service, but by 2008 that had increased to over 86.6% – which also had a knock-on effect on the average broadband speed experienced by the UK. In December 2006, the average was estimated at around 3.6Mbps, but by the end of Q1 in 2008 this was up to a noticeably quicker 5.9Mbps.
Mobile broadband also came of age, with 6% of adults using the newly promoted modems – or ‘dongles’ as they are sometimes known. Over half a million connections were made in the first five months for which data is available. This is an encouraging sign for the likes of O2 and Vodafone, who have invested heavily in both the technology and advertising. They’re also helped in this matter by the increase in availability of 3G signal, which now covers almost 90% of the UK.
3G now accounts for 17% of all mobile connections, and the amount of money spent per connection increased 4% to £17.59. Much of this increase can be attributed to the 17% hike in text message usage – in fact Ofcom’s statistics show that more adults use text messaging than they do the Internet.
The important thing to take from this bewildering array of statistics, is the importance that people attach to their telecoms. Telecommunications have become absolutely central to our lives, which means it’s important to take them seriously. With so many of us on the phone or online at any one time, businesses must ensure the service their customers receive is first class, or risk losing out to better equipped competitors . . .
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