Household take-up of digital television, via Freeview, digital satellite or cable TV, has risen to almost 85% to the end of June 2007, according to new research from Ofcom.
This was up from 80.5% in the previous quarter, equating to 944,000 net household conversions since March (see
UK Digital TV Penetration Exceeds 80%) .
A further 1.1% of homes now subscribe to analogue cable, taking the proportion of homes with multi-channel television at the end of Q2 2007 to 85%.
This is up 13 percentage points over the year, the strongest 12 months’ growth to date, Ofcom said.
Digital TV’s increasing popularity comes as a boost to the communications regulator and the government with less than a month to go before digital switchover begins.
On October 17, the Cumbrian town of Whitehaven becomes the first place in the UK to lose the analogue signal, marking the start of a five-year rolling switchover programme.
Ofcom said that digital terrestrial television platform Freeview had lead the upward trend in the quarter from April to June, accounting for 81% of the net growth in digital TV, or 763,000 sets.
At the end of June there were 9.1 million Freeview-only homes, up from 8.3 million three months earlier.
Almost 1.9 million Freeview devices were sold during the quarter – over a million of them to homes that already had digital TV.
Satellite and cable also took a share in the growth, with just over eight million customers paying for BSkyB’s satellite service in the UK and 3.4 million subscribers to the Virgin Media cable service, 3.1 million of those on digital.
Sky+ saw another quarter of growth, adding 207,000 new subscribers in Q2, taking the total to 2.3 million homes. This means that 29% of all Sky subscribers now have the PVR service. BSkyB’s HD service added 48,000 subscribers, taking the total number to 292,000 by the end of Q2, equivalent to 3.6% of Sky’s UK subscriber base.
Cable’s penetration, at 13.4% of homes, was at its highest since the second quarter of 2004.
This compared with 35.9% for digital terrestrial, or Freeview, and 35.5% for satellite, of which 3.7% was free-to-view satellite.
“More than four in five UK households are now enjoying the benefits of digital television,” said Ofcom’s chief executive Ed Richards.
“It’s extremely encouraging that we are continuing to see the market grow strongly with less than a month until Whitehaven becomes the first place to fully switch to digital television.”
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