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07|06|06

Freeview overtakes analogue television

Ofcom today publishes its Communications Market: Digital Progress Report for the first quarter of 2006 (January-March).

The report shows that digital television was viewed by 72.5% (18.2 million) UK television households - up from 69.5% at the end of 2005.

Take-up of digital television is growing faster than expected. Ofcom’s last Digital Progress Report forecast that an extra 1.7 million homes would take-up digital television in 2006. By the end of March almost 800,000 extra households had already done so.

The number of free-to-view digital households (Freeview plus free-to-view satellite) is estimated to have grown by 9.7% from January to March to over 7.7 million.

Key trends for the first quarter of 2006 include:

DIGITAL TERRESTRIAL TELEVISION (FREEVIEW)

• Freeview has for the first time overtaken traditional analogue television on primary sets in the home. Almost 7.1 million households have Freeview on the primary television set compared to around 6.4 million who are yet to take-up digital television. [SOURCE: Ofcom market estimates, GfK sales data, Freeview]
• Freeview sales for January to March were up 40% on the same period in 2005 at over 1.2 million, making this the third successive quarter in which sales have exceeded the 1 million mark. [SOURCE: GfK sales data, Freeview]
• Estimates suggest that 38% of Freeview sales are intended for secondary television sets in the home. [SOURCE GfK]

DIGITAL SATELLITE TELEVISION

• Digital satellite is the UK’s most popular digital television platform viewed by 8.3 million, or 30% of homes of which almost 7.7 million subscribe to BSkyB pay services and 645,000 receive free-to-view satellite services. [SOURCE: Ofcom market estimates, BSkyB Q1 2006 results]
• Just under 1 million BSkyB households view pay television on more than one television set through BSkyB’s Multiroom subscription service. [SOURCE BSkyB Q1 2006 results]

CABLE TELEVISION

• The number of cable television households increased slightly over the quarter and is currently just over 3.3 million. [SOURCE: NTL Q1 2006 results]
• Over 70,000 digital cable subscribers were added during the quarter, mainly as a result of analogue subscribers transferring to digital services. [SOURCE: NTL Q1 2006 results]

The full report is available at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/dtv/dtu_2006_q1/

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