524,000 UK Households Went Digital In Q4 2007
Ofcom’s latest digital television update, for the fourth quarter of 2007, reveals that there were 524,500 net UK household conversions to digital television (DTT), following 361,700 additions in the previous quarter.
Freeview experienced its strongest quarter so far, with four million units sold, while the digital cable and satellite platforms together added over 280,000 digital households, the regulator said.
This means that 86.7% of households now receive digital television services on their primary set, up 1.6 percentage points since September 2007.
With a further 0.9% of households subscribing to analogue cable, the total number of homes receiving multi-channel television at the end of Q4 2007 grew to 87.6%.
Ofcom also found that DTT-only households accounted for almost half (49%) of all growth in digital TV homes in Q4, rising by 243,000 to around 9,575,000 by the end of the quarter.
With just over one million homes using free-to-view digital satellite services by the end of Q4, 10.6 million homes now watch free-to-view digital television (satellite or DTT) on their main set.
However, the regulator revealed yesterday that a quarter of Freeview households in Wales and Northern Ireland – and a fifth in the Meridian and Anglia regions of England – will not have full access to the digital terrestrial TV channels after analogue switchoff (see Ofcom Reveals Switchover Problems).
The coverage of Freeview’s three commercial multiplexes – home to Five’s network of channels including Five US, Sky News, Dave and Virgin 1 among others – will reach just 73% of Wales and 75% of Northern Ireland from 2012, when switchover is completed.
The number of BSkyB subscribers rose by 145,000 in Q4, to reach almost 8.3 million by the end of the year. Taking account for free-to-view satellite, there were over 9.3 million satellite homes by the end of Q4 2007.
Net cable households overtook analogue terrestrial during the quarter to become the third most commonly used platform on main sets. This followed cable’s fastest growth rate for seven years, with 61,100 net additions during the quarter, taking the total subscriber base to 3.5 million, also the highest level of take-up since 2002.
Digital cable subscribers increased by over 86,500 in Q4 to nearly 3.3 million; meaning 94% of all cable subscriptions are now digital.
A recent report from the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices service found that Worldwide sales of digital TV set-top boxes broke through the 100 million barrier for the first time in 2007.
Meanwhile, a report from Attentional claimed that the rapid conversion of older viewers to digital TV platforms will be one of the factors helping to offer a bright future for UK television over the next five years.
It added that the digital conversion of younger viewers who have so far resisted taking up multichannel technologies will also playing a significant role.
Ofcom: 020 7981 3040 www.ofcom.org.uk