Ofcom have published its first research publication which focuses
specifically on the international communications market, reflecting the
increasing impact of global issues on the UK commercial and regulatory
communications agenda. (including tv/radio as well as television) and all
within 221 pages!

The UK spends more than any of the developed western economies considered in
this report on consuming communications services - in 2005 communications
spend accounted for 4.1% of GDP.

The key points - as far as they relate to telecoms were:

- In 2005 total global telecoms revenues were £649bn (equating to £100 of
revenue per person on the planet), representing average annual growth of
5.7% in nominal terms since 2001.
- Growth in telecoms is being driven by mobile service revenues rather than
fixed; however new telecoms services like voice over IP (VoIP) are
increasingly making inroads in countries like France and Japan.
- After Italy, the UK has the highest number of mobile subscribers per 100
population of the countries studied in this report.
- Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) have widely varying market
strength - in the UK, where MVNOs partnered with network operators as early
as 1999, they accounted for 13% of subscribers in 2005; in other countries
such as Italy there were no MVNOs.
- By the end of 2005, around 7% of the UK's mobile subscriptions were
3G-enabled, contrasting with only just over 1% in the US, but over 30% in
Japan.
- Broadband is widely available in all countries participating in the
study - but in the UK availability was among the highest at over 95%.
- The UK has also seen one of the fastest growths in broadband connections -
increasing from one per hundred households in 2001 to 39 in 2005. The UK
currently has higher take-up than France, Germany and Japan, but still lags
Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden.
- DSL is becoming the most prevalent broadband connection method across most
of the countries in our analysis: this reflects services offered by an
increasing number of providers benefiting from a combination of wholesale
provision from network incumbents and local loop unbundling.
- The UK and the Republic of Ireland lead in WiFi communications among the
countries considered, with around 18 hot-spots per 100 people.
- Broadband-enabled consumers are increasingly using the internet to
download films, audio tracks, news and other TV programmes in large
quantities across all the countries in our research, with China showing
particularly high use.

There is also a price benchmarking exercise conducted for this report shows
that UK prices are at the low end of the countries analysed across a range
of household consumption patterns.

The full report is available via:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/icmr06/

For those not wishing to read the whole thing, The Times has a summary of
the 'value for money' that the UK gets at
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9076-2478743,00.html

Regards
Sunil