UK Communications Market Statistics

Ofcom have just published their annual market report, packed with interesting stats and free of charge:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm

Some examples (my emphasis):

• Total retail revenue in the UK communications sector reached £50bn in 2005, a 5% increase compared to 2004. The biggest annual rise (£2bn) came from the telecoms sector
• Consumption of many communications services is rising. On average in 2005, mobile subscribers made more calls and sent more texts than they did in 2001, internet users spent almost 20 minutes more time online per week.
• There is also evidence of a significant difference in communications usage patterns between young adults and the general population: for example, 16-24 year olds spend on average 21 minutes more time online per week, send 42 more SMS text messages, but spend over seven hours less time watching television.
• Availability of several new digital services increased during 2005; 3G mobile services are now available to over 90% of the population and the proportion of unbundled exchanges is up ten percentage points on 2004.
• Take-up of digital services continued to increase over the year: by March 2006 18.3 million UK homes took digital TV services, 11 million homes and small businesses had broadband connections, and there were around five million 3G subscribers.
• Mobile telecoms comprised £13.1 billion (34%) of total retail telecoms revenue – up from £12.0 billion in 2004
• Some 31% of UK call volumes in 2005 were from mobiles – a rise of three percentage points from 2004, and 11 percentage points higher than in 2001.