The number of households that
own a television set has declined for the first time as the TV screen falls
victim to other devices that can be used to watch videos.
Ofcom
report that there were 26 million television households, a 500,000 fall since
the start of last year, as viewers turned to tablet computers, games consoles,
laptops and smartphones. There are a
million households in Britain that rely on broadband for their entertainment
needs and have no sets.
Ofcom’s figures for catch-up
viewing showed that 47 per cent of requests to watch shows on BBC iPlayer came from tablet computers or smartphones in July this year , compared with
25 per cent in 2012.
Ofcom
said that consumers, on average, were downloading 53GB of data a month — the
equivalent of 35 feature films — over broadband networks, 77 per cent higher
than last year. About 7GB of data is being uploaded for each household, the
equivalent of 3,500 photos. There has also been a boom in mobile data usage,
which has grown by 46 per cent to 1.5GB a year as people make use of fast 4G
networks to watch videos and to upload photos via a smartphone.
The average download speed for
the UK’s broadband networks is 23Mbps, but Ofcom
said that 3 per cent of households could not receive the government’s minimum
basic requirement of 2Mbps, which was an election pledge. The regulator said
that a standard broadband connection of 10Mbps was out of reach for 15 per cent
of British households.
Ofcom has said that the
availability of “ultrafast” broadband of more than 100Mbps needs to be
considered by the industry and policymakers
Reported
in ‘The Times’ 9th December 2014
Fortunately for our area, Gigaclear will be providing up to
1,000Mbps
