Network traffic jumps with Brits glued to screens

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 19 Aug 2010 at 14:15

Brits spend nearly half their day in front of a screen, leading to a jump in internet traffic over fixed and mobile connections, according to a UK-wide report from Ofcom.

The volume of data running over fixed line connections jumped 68% over the past year, while mobile data climbed 240%.

Ofcom said the growth in screen time and network traffic is mostly down to social networking and smartphones, with ownership of the latter rocketing from 7.2 million last year to 12.8 million this year.

While social networking and smartphones are increasingly popular, Brits still watch an average 3 hours and 45 minutes of television a day. TV catch-up services such as BBC's iPlayer are used by a third of households with internet access.

Overall, the amount of time spent online via fixed lines is up by two thirds in 2008 to an average 14 hours a month this year.

Revenue stalling?

All that data consumption isn't costing us more, however. Communications spending took up 4.4% of household spend last year, compared to 4.6 the year before, with spending falling 17% over the past five years.

The Ofcom report showed that was hitting UK operator revenue, which fell by 2.6% to £30.4 billion, below 2007 levels. While Ofcom attributed this to the economic downturn and price pressures from bundling, it also noted that revenue from network traffic wasn't climbing at the same rate as the volume of data sent.

While Britain is eating up more data, revenue from that traffic has stayed mostly flat for fixed line residential broadband over the past two years.

Mobile connections followed a similar trend. "During 2009 there was a slowdown of growth in data revenues, which increased by 26%, while data volumes more than doubled."

"A striking feature of the telecoms market in 2009 was that a fall in overall retail revenues came in the context of massive increases in data use," Ofcom said.

It's not all bad news for operators, however. "It should be noted that the relationship between data usage and costs is not linear – and that within access networks there may be scope for very significant increases in usage without any significant increase in costs," Ofcom added.