Communications Rise and Fall

• Read full article
• Share this article
• Related articles

Report by Ofcom shows that we are spending less money but more time

Ofcom have produced a report which shows how we are using, and what we are spending on our communication. Since 2002 the use of a mobile phone has doubled and PC and laptop use has grown fourfold, says the Ofcom annual review. Also the monthly spend on communications has fallen for the third year in a row.

According to the report every day in 2007 the average consumer spent 7 hours and 9 minutes watching TV, on the phone, using the internet or using other services. But the average UK household spend on communications in 2007 was £93.63 a month - a fall of £1.53 on 2006. Ofcom believes that consumers are getting increasingly clever about communication services by switching providers or paying one fee for a bundle of services.

TV has proven once again to be the most popular pastime with the average person watching for 3 hours and 38 minutes a day last year, but we are also spending 24 minutes per day on computers and 10 minutes using mobiles. We’re spending more time on the phone than ever, with a 21% increase in minutes spent on mobile calls.

In 2007 58% of homes had broadband, up from 52% in 2006. The average household spending on broadband was £9.45 for an internet connection in 2007 compared with £9.87 in 2006. However the falling prices are causing concerns that it will be difficult to raise the investment needed to make faster networks.

The real increase is in the use of mobile broadband after a huge marketing push by mobile phone companies selling broadband dongles. The sale of these has increased from 69,000 a month in February to 133,000 in June this year. Two million people say they have used mobile broadband, and three quarters of these have used it at home as well as on the move – showing that mobile operators are now competing with fixed line broadband for customers.

So despite the ‘credit crunch’ people are still not giving up on their communication and entertainment habits, they are just finding cheaper deals and better ways of combining products to suit them.