Broadband Penetration 48% in EC

With the caveat that there are wide variances between countries, broadband access services are used by about 48 percent of European Union households, the European Commission reports.

On average, household computer access has increased by seven percentage points to 64 percent of households. However, there is considerable country variation, the greatest incidence of household computer access is in the Netherlands (92%), Denmark
(87%) and Sweden (87%), while the lowest incidence is in Bulgaria (37%) and Romania (42%).

Over half of EU households have Internet access (57%), including both dial-up and broadband. Generally speaking, broadband access mirrors PC ownership. The Netherlands (89%), Denmark (85%) and Sweden (85%) exhibit the highest incidence of household Internet access and Bulgaria (35%) and Romania (31%) have the lowest rates of PC ownership.

About 48 percent of EC homes now use broadband, while seven percent use narrowband. By way of comparison, most surveys of U.S. broadband use suggest 60 to 65 percent of U.S. homes use broadband. The FCC recently has suggested 62 percent broadband uptake, while US Telecom uses a figure of 67 percent. Overall, including dial-up access and primary use outside the home, US Telecom says U.S. Internet access reaches 78 percent of homes.

What is different in Europe is the prevalence of telephone network connections, compared to use of cable modems. On average, most (62%) use an ADSL (telco) connection to access the Internet. In comparison, relatively few use the cable network (15%) to access the Internet,
which is the next most common connection type.

However, in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia more connect using the cable TV network than an ADSL connection.

Observers often note that some areas of the United States do not have any fixed-line access. In the EC countries, about 16 percent of respondents say they cannot buy broadband from any fixed-line providers in their areas.

Still, about 43 percent of EC households report they do not buy broadband access service. The majority of those without access claim that it is because no one in the home is interested in the Internet (58%). However, the various costs associated with the Internet are also cited as obstacles to access, although to a lower extent (19%).

Overall, computer access in the home is increasing across the EU; the proportion of households having a computer has increased by seven percentage points on average.

Almost two thirds of EU households have a computer. On average, computer ownership is greater in the countries that are long-time members of the EU, with two thirds (66%) of households having a computer. Computer ownership is lower among countries that have joined the EU more recently (53%).

The greatest incidence of computers in home is in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, where about nine out of ten households have a computer. Conversely, the lowest incidence is in Bulgaria and Romania where the proportion with a computer in home is less than half that in the Netherlands, Denmark or Sweden.

read the report here

UK Leads in Digital TV

The U.K. is well ahead of most other European countries in its use of digital media, by some measures. By the start of 2007, more than 76 percent of U.K. TV households were receiving digital TV services, a rate higher than other Western European countries, Japan or the United States, for example.

According to Ofcom, U.K. adults also spend more time on social networking sites than other Europeans. Two in five U.K. adults regularly log on to these sites, clocking up an average of 23 visits and 5.3 hours each month.

In the U.K. market, 33 percent of users send picture messages via their mobiles and 16 percent use them to connect to the Internet. About 10 percent of U.K. adults use mobiles for e-mail.

Ofcom also believes that online advertising in the United Kingdom accounted for 14 percent of total advertising revenues in 2006, passing magazine advertising for the first time and registering more than total spending on outdoor, cinema and radio advertising combined.

Advertisers in the U.K. market also spend more money per consumer on Internet advertising than any other country, at £33. According to Ofcom, this is twice as much as France, Germany and Italy combined.

Online advertising revenues generated in the U.K. market in 2006 also beat the combined totals of Germany, France and Italy at £231 per head.

Is U.K. Business Broadband Near Saturation?

By October about 1.76 million (85 percent) of the 2.12 million U.K. workplaces already had Internet access. This is much the same proportion as six months earlier, in March according to Point Topic. Which could lead to several different conclusions. One might argue that the base of potential buyers is nearly saturated. Or one could argue that the remaining 360,000 sites require some new sort of plan. One might also argue that some businesses might not require broadband, for some reason.

Point Topic’s latest results contrast with the 6.3 percent increase found for the period May 2006 to March 2007 when the pace of broadband development was still high.

Part of the problem is that most of the remaining businesses without internet access are small and poor, Point Topic notes. There is a strong positive association between workforce size and business internet penetration. Organizations with more than 250 employees all have Internet access. Businesses with only one or two employees reported 75 percent penetration.

Internet penetration is 100 percent in the businesses with the highest sales volume, particularly those in the finance sector. All businesses with over £20 million in sales have Internet access, but only 77 percent of those in the “£50k to £100k” category do.

The wholesale and business services sectors are both close to saturation with take-up at 95 percent. The least connected is the retail sector, where only 67 percent of companies have Internet access.

About half of businesses say they are making do with an ordinary, low cost, consumer type internet service. But as the number of employees in a business rises, the proportion using consumer-type internet services falls and that using more expensive business-quality services rises.

In terms of internet connection types, cable modem connections are found much more frequently at smaller workplaces, with 20 percent of all Internet-connected one or two employee businesses choosing them.

Take-up is only around five percent at medium-sized sites and they disappear altogether at the biggest ones. More common amongst businesses with greater employee numbers are satellite, fiber, ATM, leased line or frame relay connections. Some dial-up or IDSN connections are found at all workforce sizes – with ISDN much more important at the larger end.