Topic: Broadband hits four million mark

[Clive]

The broadband market is growing steadily, suggest the latest statistics from telecoms regulator Ofcom.

Over half of UK homes have internet access and a quarter of these have broadband.

That represents around 15% of UK homes using a high speed connection, either via the phone line, cable or wireless.

With four million connections in place and around 40,000 new ones being made each week, consumers seem to be making the switch to broadband.

There is still some way to go to reach the government goal of being the most extensive and competitive broadband market among the G7 countries by 2005 however.

By the government's own figures, the UK ranks third in the world in terms of coverage and competitiveness, and joint sixth with Italy in terms of take-up, the Ofcom report said.

The report also looked at the take-up of digital TV in the run-up to the government's planned analogue switch-off.

It found that the number of people switching to digital was slowly inching upwards, with digital television now reaching 53% of UK households.

Since December 710,000 new subscribers have made the move to digital.

Broadcaster Sky still enjoys the lion's share of digital subscribers, with nearly 7 million viewers.

The number of people using digital terrestrial TV via Freeview has also gone up by nearly 19% to 3.5 million.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3770369.stm