Ofcom has published its sixth annual Communications Market Report, which reveals how the UK communications sector – TV, radio and telecoms - is changing from year to year.
From a mobile perspective, it points to the new sub-£10 ‘pay monthly’ tariffs and the high take-up of 3G services. It also says the volume of fixed-line voice calls has continued to fall, the volume of mobile voice calls has continued to rise – and the overall household spend on telecoms service has fallen again. Mobile penetration is now calculated to be 126% for the UK, with 29.3% of all these mobile connections using 3G (or having it available to use).
Operator-reported revenues from telecoms services did not increase in 2008 – the first time this has happened since Ofcom’s predecessor Oftel started to collect market data in 1992/93 – remaining unchanged at £39.5 billion. Another first was that the number of prepay mobile connections fell during 2008 due to lower-cost ‘pay monthly’ contracts. In fact, 32% of mobile contracts sold in Q1 2009 were for tariffs costing under £20 per month. [PDF report]