Ofcom the UK’s communications regulator has published its annual state of the nation report. We picked up on some of the revelations about take-up and impact of Fixed Line Broadband.
Demand for broadband continues to rise. There were 26.6 million UK fixed broadband connections at the end of 2018, an increase of 0.5 million (2%) compared to the previous year.
Consumers are upgrading to faster broadband. The number of fibre-to-the-cabinet connections overtook standard broadband copper connections for the first time this year, and the number of superfast broadband lines increased by 17% as people upgraded from standard broadband services.
People are using more data. The volume of data used on fixed and mobile connections both grew by around a quarter, with 240GB being used on average each month per fixed broadband connection and 2.9GB in an average month being used on each mobile data connection.
Data use growth is driven by online video. Fifty-eight per cent of people watched on-demand video services, up from 53%. This is driven by increased use of subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. There was no change in the proportion of people watching the PSB broadcasters’ free catch-up services (BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4 and My5), and for some age groups, this declined.
FTTC overtakes ADSL. The number of superfast fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) connections overtook the number of ADSL standard broadband connections for the first time during 2018, and superfast connections accounted for 59% of all fixed broadband lines at the end of 2018.
The volume of mobile text messages continues to fall. More than 5 billion fewer traditional SMS and MMS messages were sent in 2018, as people are increasingly moving their chats to cheaper internet based Instant Messaging (IM) services like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
Read more details about the report findings https://www.ofcom.org.uk/../cmr-2019
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