12 Percent of UK Homes Enjoy Mobile Broadband, Says Ofcom
Ofcom has revealed in its latest report on the communications market that around three million households in the United Kingdom had a mobile broadband connection currently. The telecoms watchdog of the country said that in May alone, more than 250,000 mobile broadband modems (dongles) were sold. This marks a clear increase from the 139,000 dongles sold in May 2009. The report that highlights the information pertaining to the end of the year’s first quarter also stated that the total homes using mobile broadband currently averaged to around 12 percent.
At the same time, the report of the communications watcdog also observes that three quarter of the homes also had a broadband connection of the fixed line kind, which according to it meant that the mobile broadband connections were maintained as a complement to their fixed line connections by the homes, rather than as replacements for them. On the other hand, Ofcom also opined that this can be taken as a result of the constraints imposed on them by the capacity and speed of mobile broadband. The view of the adjudicator suggests that the home users might be considering mobile broadband predominantly for its mobility factor.
As a matter of fact, mobile broadband services of the day, with their low speeds and capacity might end up a spoilsport for the home users who are more inclined to the use of advanced applications such as the iPlayer of BBC that is a data hungry service. Nevertheless, the report’s finding that mobile broadband – by scoring just 83 percent – accounted for the lowest rating of customer satisfaction of all the communications services surveyed by Ofcom, obviously falls as a black mark on the segment.
Finally, Ofcom has also noted that for the first time in May, the mobile broadband contracts were outsold by pay as you go connections. This trend according to the regulator, indicated the expansion of the service into both the wallet conscious who were unable or unwilling to give in to a monthly commitment, and users of lower frequency that wanted the service for emergency or occasional use.
