United Kingdom
Internet Broadband Report
United Kingdom Broadband
Market - Overview & Statistics report
The UK’s broadband infrastructure is characterised by excellent cross-platform
competition, with comprehensive DSL complemented by cable networks which reach
about half of all households. The DSL network has been upgraded during the last
few years as a result of BT’s migration to its new 21CN, and by early 2011 more
than five million users could access wholesale ADSL2+. Virgin Media has emerged
as the best provider in terms of realised speeds, the company has rolled out a
100Mb/s service across much of its footprint, and it intended to launch a 200Mb/s
service later in 2011. In addition, BT’s FttC/VDSL service should cover 66% of
the population by 2015. The market remains fiercely competitive as a result of
regulatory measures to provide competitor access to BT’s exchanges, while during
2010 similar measures were undertaken to ensure equal access on fibre networks.
Broadband has also been characterised by falling prices and by a gradual increase
in average data speeds, which reached 8Mb/s by mid-2010. This report profiles the
overall UK broadband market in 2011, covering broadband technologies and including
the latest statistics, an update on recent commercial initiatives, an assessment
of Next Generation Access, and forecasts to 2020.
See the table of content and
summary
United Kingdom Internet Usage
and Broadband
June, 2004
Internet access
" 59% of UK homes have a
PC
" 52% of homes (around 12.8
million) have Internet access
" 68% of small businesses have
Internet access
Broadband
" 3.2 million broadband
connections
" 1.82 million DSL
connections
" 1.36 million cable modem
connections
" 12% of homes have
broadband
" DSL is available to 85% of UK
homes and businesses
Definitions
‘Dial-up’ or
‘narrowband’ Internet access is used in this brief
for access speeds up to and including 128 kilobits per second
(kbps).
'Broadband' is used in this brief
to refer to higher bandwidth, always-on services, offering data
rates of 128 kbps and above.
This definition of broadband is
used by Ofcom for the purposes of measuring take-up in order to
capture the dynamic range of services available to residential
and business consumers that are classed by the industry as
broadband. This definition gives Ofcom data that is comparable
with broadband take-up figures published by other countries in
Europe.
Source: Ofcom Research, January 2004
Update, June 18,
2004
Latest official figures from the
Office of National Statistics (ONS) indicate that subscriptions
to the Net have grown almost 10%, with more net users switching
to broadband.
Subscriptions for dial-up and broadband Internet connections
continued to show opposing patterns of annual growth. The year on
year decrease to April 2004 was 6.8% for dial-up connections with
a decrease of 1.9% from March 2004 to April 2004. There was a
year on year increase of 101.1% for broadband connections with a
monthly increase of 6.1%.
Broadband now accounts for 27.2% of Internet connections, up
2.5% on the previous month and up 14.5% on a year ago. Dial-up
subscriptions saw a 6.8% year-on-year decrease.
Increased competition between broadband providers has resulted
in a "gold rush" for consumers, with competition giving more
choice and cheaper deals.
More people in the UK can now access broadband. BT's latest
stats are that 96% of customers are within range of broadband
access, with a target of 99.6% for the summer of 2005.
June 2 2004: Broadband and DTV on the rise says Ofcom
June 2 2004: BT launches satellite broadband service
UK Households with home access
to the Internet, 1998-2004
In the second quarter of 2004, 52 per cent of households in the
UK (12.8 million) could access the Internet from home, compared
with just 9 per cent (2.2 million) in the same quarter of 1998.
For 2008 detailed information click here.
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