Paraphrenitis Blog

of the UK homes now have access to fixed line broadband, which is a major improvement from the 58 per cent last year. These figures for Q1 2009 clearly show that the economic slowdown has failed to contain the broadband boom in the country. Ofcom, the telecoms supervisory body, releases periodical reports about the state of the country’s £52 billion communications industry by covering all important aspects of telecoms, broadband, mobile, TV and radio (click here for broadband and TV info).

This year’s more than 300 page report is quite unique in that it provides statistics and data which deal with the state of the communications and broadband industry at a time when people are actually tightening their purses due to the recession. However, it is fascinating to note that despite the constraints, the stability in spending on broadband and allied services come next only to toiletries and groceries.

The report also states that there has been a 4% t increase in the number of users accessing the Local Loop Unbundling or the LLU service provided by the telecom companies. In this technology, the telecom companies use their own equipment in the local telephone exchange.

The report also touched areas of development in the broadband industry and called 2009 a great year for all broadband users, mainly because of the launch of various products that made ‘very high speed’ broadband a reality for the first time in the country. Developments that found a mention in the report were the XXL 50Mb cable broadband that was released by Virgin Media and the much awaited £1.5bn fibre network of British Telecom, slated to be rolled out by 2012.