Ofcom communication report 2008

Ofcom's 2008 communication report covering the UK’s £51 billion communications industry was released this week. Its key finding was that people in the UK are spending more time using communications services than ever before – but paying less for them.

The Ofcom report covers broadcast, internet, mobile, landline and radio communication channels and shows that in 2007 we spent an average of 7 hours and 9 minutes a day using communications services - up by 6 minutes from 2002.

The UK's mobile and internet usage increased by the greatest amount. Between 2002 and 2007 the time spent talking and texting on mobiles doubled, up from 5 minutes to 10 minutes each day. Meanwhile, time spent on PCs and lap-tops grew fourfold between 2002 and 2007 - from 6 minutes to 24 minutes per person every day.

Using more, paying less
Despite the growth in communication channel usage and take-up, consumers are paying less with overall average household spend on communications services falling 1.6% to £93.63 a month in 2007, a saving of £1.53 on the average spend compared to 2006, and since 2004, a saving of £4.31 (4.4%). There are three main reasons behind the fall in the price of communications services:

Discounts from bundles:
Consumers are increasingly buying bundles of communications services - paying one fee for multiple services, which is generally cheaper than buying individual services from different providers. The number of households buying bundles of three or more services – for example landline, broadband and pay-TV – has almost doubled up from 18% in 2006 to 32% by March 2008.

Lower prices for broadband:
The average household spend on internet and broadband services fell from £9.87 in 2006 to £9.45 in 2007.

Bargain hunting:
An increasing proportion of consumers are switching between providers in order to get the best deal. By March 2008, 27% had switched internet provider at least once; 37% had switched landline provider and 41% had changed mobile provider.

Broadband at home and on the move
Take-up of broadband through a landline grew from 52 per cent of households to 58% in 12 months, mainly as a result of consumers upgrading from dial-up access to always-on broadband. Increased sales of laptop dongles enabling internet access via a mobile network nearly doubled from 69,000 to 133,000 a month between February and June 2008. As a result, there were 511,000 new mobile broadband connections in the UK.

60% Growth in 3G mobile connections:
More than one in ten mobile phone users have accessed the internet on their mobile phone with the number of 3G mobile connections growing by 60% in 2007 to reach 12.5 million subscribers – an increase of 4.7 million in 12 months.

Online and on-demand
Whilst there has been a small increase in the number of minutes spent each day watching the TV (218 minutes in 2007, compared with 216 in 2006), there is an increased trend for consumers taking control of TV viewing. Viewers are watching programmes when they want and how they want, rather than just relying on the TV schedules.

Growth in online TV watching:
The proportion of people with an internet connection who are watching TV programmes online more than doubled from 8% to 17% in twelve months. The BBC iPlayer, which enables viewers to watch programmes up to a week after they were broadcast, delivered more than 700,000 daily video streams in May 2008.

Growth in online video and webcast viewing:
Nearly a third of internet users (32%) watched video clips and webcasts in 2007, compared to a fifth (21%) in 2006. The number of UK internet users who watched YouTube, reached 9 million in April this year, nearly 50 per cent more than a year ago.

IM preference over email for Generation Y:
Instant messaging is more popular than email amongst children with 62% of 12-15 year old sending an instant message, compared with 43% of them sending an email. Adults prefer to email – 80% of adults sent an email compared to 34% who used instant messaging.

Increase in online radio listening:
The number of people listening to radio via the internet has increased to 14.5 million by May 2008, up 21% from 12.0 million in November 2007.

Slowdown in VoIP usage:
The number of people using voice over internet protocol (VoIP) fell from 20% in 2006 to 14% in the first quarter of 2008.

Mobile telecoms
By the end of 2007, there were almost 74 million mobile connections serving a population of 60 million in the UK. This was an increase of 3.7 million connections since the end of 2006. The total number of mobile connections increased by 48% in the five years from 2002.

Mobile preference over landline:
Seven out of ten people with a mobile phone and a landline use their mobile to make calls, even when they are at home. One in ten people with a landline at home said that they never use it to make calls.

UK text messaging addiction:
In the UK, nearly 60 billion text messages were sent in 2007 - an increase of 36% since 2006 and up by 234% since 2002 when 17 billion texts were sent. The average mobile phone user sent 67 texts per month from each mobile compared to 53 texts per month in 2006.

Generation Y gender channel preferences:
The majority of children have access to the internet and most have a mobile phone but there is a gender preference. Boys aged 8-11 are twice as likely to use the internet every day compared to girls of the same age (45% compared to 22%). Meanwhile girls aged 12-15 are more likely to use a mobile phone than boys of the same age (74% compared to 65%).

Generation Y mobile phone dependency:
When asked which media activity would be missed the most, 42% of these teenagers said they would miss their mobile most. Watching TV came next at 20%.

Television and Radio
Digital television and radio penetration continued and by July 2008, nearly 9 out of 10 households had digital television (87.2%) compared to 7 out of 10 twelve months ago. By March 2008, 7 million households (27%) had a DAB radio set, up from 17% on last year.

Increase in DVR penetration:
More consumers are now able to choose when to watch, pause and rewind live TV. At the end of 2007 nearly 6 million households (23%) had a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) up by 53% in a year.

Broadcast advertising reach affected by DVR consumer behaviour:
The vast majority of people (88%) said that, when they use their DVRs, they use them to fast forward through advertisements.

HD television becoming the standard:
By March of this year, nearly 80% of all TV sets sold in the UK were High-Definition (HD) ready, up from 50 per cent in twelve months. The number of HD subscriptions more than doubled to reach 829,000 over the same period.

Television most-missed media channel overall:
More than half of consumers (52%) said watching TV would be the media activity missed the most, up from 44% in 2005. The next highest ‘most-missed’ activity would be using a mobile phone at 13%, up from 10% in 2005.

Advertising
Internet advertising spend greater than broadcast:
Online advertising spend is up by almost 40% year-on-year reaching £2.8 billion in 2007. For the first time, more money was spent on internet advertising than the combined advertising spending on ITV1, Channel 4, S4C and five (£2.4 billion).

Paid-for search advertising spend domination:
Paid-for search advertising spend was up 39% during 2007 at £1.6 billion. Classified advertising saw the largest increase in 2007 – up 54% to £600 million while display advertising grew by 29% in 2007 accounting for a further £600 million of advertising spend.

RELATED LINKS:
Cx3 blog entry. iPhone: Driving growth in mobile internet usage behaviour
Cx3 blog entry. Generation Y communicate, unite and shout