Three Quarters Of Brits Now Online

Almost three quarters of households in the UK now have access to broadband, according to telecoms regulator Ofcom, with 23 percent choosing to access the web via a mobile device.

Ofcom’s annual Communications Market Report shows that uptake of broadband across Britain as a whole now stands at 71 percent, with England showing the highest level of adoption among the UK’s four nations. Adoption is highest in the South East, at 80 percent, and lowest in the West Midlands (62 percent). However, take-up is reportedly higher in rural than urban areas.

Mobile broadband

Meanwhile, mobile broadband take-up in inner London is the highest in the UK, at 27 percent. According to Ofcom, nearly a quarter of people living in London use their mobile phone to access the Internet. Despite this, however, the majority of Brits are not confident using their mobile phone to access the Internet.

“Technological change – brought about by increases in broadband speeds and by advances in wireless technology – influenced consumer use of Internet services,” said Ofcom in the report. “Social networking sites have also taken advantage of the growing popularity of the mobile Internet and the increasing take-up of smartphones. Most sites now have mobile-friendly versions and specific applications for smartphones.”

Ofcom claims that a fifth of 16- to 24-year-olds’ time spent social networking is on mobile devices. This compares to the average of 15 percent for all adults who use social networking sites. While around 37 per cent of over 55s use email each day and 47 per cent use it weekly, only 13 percent of people in this age group used a mobile device to access the Internet.

Digital Inclusion

The statistics will come as good news to the government’s “digital champion”, Martha Lane Fox, who is working to get the last remaining ten million Brits online before the end of 2012. However, it emerged earlier this month that Lane Fox has been given no budget to complete the project.

“There is no money and we don’t need it to make a big stride forward,” Lane Fox said at the time. “There is a massive amount you can do. You can make big inroads into that 10 million number without having to spend money.”

However, Lane Fox’s plans could still be foiled due to ongoing difficulties with the rollout of broadband in the UK. Back in June, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that the government’s plan to roll out 2Mbps broadband to all British homes by 2012 have been delayed until 2015. Hunt blamed the previous government for setting a target that could not be met with the resources available.

About three million households (mostly in rural areas) still cannot get 2Mbps broadband, and around one percent of the country (160,000 UK homes) cannot get broadband over phone lines at all. Meanwhile, fibre-based superfast broadband will miss about a third of the country under current plans by commercial providers.

And even those that can can access to the Internet may not be getting the speeds they are promised by their service providers. Ofcom recently admonished providers for continuing to advertise speeds which consumers were not able to receive. A recent study by content management firm Akamai found that Brits had an average broadband speed of 3.8Mbps.