Half UK households are Net-connected, says Oftel

Posted on 27 Oct 2003 at 11:08

Oftel has announced that half of UK households are connected to the Internet, with a million set to make the broadband leap in the next year. However, Oftel is counting always-on services of 128Kbits/sec and greater, which offer prices comparable to unmetered dial-up, as broadband.

With the cheapest dial-up and below average broadband tariffs in the European countries surveyed, the UK take-up of the Internet continues apace: 12.5 million homes are now connected, and the last three months have seen 750,000 new connections.

David Edmonds, Director General of Telecommunications said today: 'Growth in Internet access, coupled with some of the lowest prices in Europe, is excellent news. Prices in the UK are cheaper for dial-up than all other countries covered in Oftel's benchmarking research, so it is not surprising that half of UK homes are now connected to the Internet.'

Of the broadband picture, he commented: 'Oftel's research shows that a further one million consumers could upgrade to broadband over the next 12 months. We have a growth rate stronger than both France and Germany.'

Quite how far you can choke broadband services and still call them broadband has been the subject of much debate ever since NTL introduced its 128Kbits/sec service. Now with Tiscali bolstering the nether-256Kbps arena, it is again a hot topic. BT says it considers only services of 512Kbits/sec and upwards as broadband, and back in June, Oftel itself made the distinction of only recognising 128 services as 'entry-level', with services at 256 and above as 'standard'.

Oftel's survey considered Internet services in France, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom and the US (the States of Ohio and California are used for dial-up services).

Author: Matt Whipp