Digital television has reached over 70% of households in the UK, although most sales of Freeview boxes are for homes which have already gone digital, according to a new report from Ofcom.
Ofcom says that during the three months to June, the proportion of households in the UK which receive digital television services on their primary TV set increased slightly to 70.2%.
However, the 1.2 million sales of digital terrestrial television (DTT) equipment and 100,000 net subscriber additions during the quarter illustrated, says Ofcom, that a growing number of households are going digital on secondary TV sets.
A recent report from Datamonitor revealed that the UK remains the only country in Europe with over 50% of households having digital television services (see UK Only Country In Europe With Over 50% DTV Services).
In addition, a further 1.8% of households subscribed to analogue cable services in Q2 2006, leaving the total number of homes receiving some form of multi-channel television at 72.0%.
In Q2 the number of households with digital TV equipment rose by over 168,000 to reach almost 17.7 million. It was also the fourth successive quarter in which sales exceeded one million.
The original methodology Ofcom used to estimate the number of DTT homes, which incorporated sales data, could lead to an overstatement on the number of new DTT homes unless an accurate second sales figure is applied every quarter. Therefore Ofcom has decided to use GfK market research data to calculate the DTT homes figure from now on.
Digital Take-up In UK Homes
| |
2004 |
2005 |
2005 |
2005 |
2005 |
2006 |
2006 |
2006 |
| |
Q4 |
Q1 |
Q2 |
Q3 |
Q4 |
Previous Q1 |
Restated Q1 |
Q2 |
| Digital Take-up |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Digital Cable |
10.1% |
10.2% |
10.4% |
10.6% |
10.8% |
11.1% |
11.1% |
11.3% |
| Digital Satellite |
30.8% |
31.3% |
31.7% |
32.1% |
32.8% |
33.1% |
33.1% |
33.4% |
| DTT |
18.5% |
20.3% |
20.8% |
22.6% |
25.7% |
28.1% |
25.3% |
25.3% |
| ADSL |
0.1% |
0.1% |
0.1% |
0.2% |
0.2% |
0.2% |
0.2% |
0.2% |
| Total Digital |
59.4% |
61.9% |
63.0% |
65.4% |
69.5% |
72.5% |
69.7% |
70.2% |
| Analogue Cable |
3.2% |
3.0% |
2.8% |
2.6% |
2.4% |
2.1% |
2.1% |
1.8% |
| Total Multichannel |
62.6% |
64.9% |
65.8% |
68.0% |
71.8% |
74.6% |
71.8% |
72.0% |
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