Stats and Facts

Customer Numbers

Mobile telecommunications have been available in the UK since the mid 1980s, they are now ubiquitous: there are now 81 million mobile connections in the UK. 

In 2000, just half of UK adults said that they had a mobile phone – that figure now stands at 91%.

Over 4.8 million customers now access mobile broadband services via a laptop and dongle, and 28% of UK adults use their mobile phones for internet access. Mobile telephony is vital for the UK’s economic competitiveness, and in promoting social inclusion.

The number of text messages increased by 24.1% in 2010 with over 129 billion sent, representing an average of over five a day for every person in the UK.

UK smartphone users are collectively spending £581m a year via mobile apps. One in five UK smartphone users bought items via their phone, with an average spend of £33.46 per person. (Source OnePoll)

 At the end of 2010 there were 33.1 million 3G mobile connections, 6.2 million more than a year previously.

Overall satisfaction with mobile phone service at the end of 2010 was 93%, having been at 87% in 2000. 

Mobile Network Coverage

Mobile operators made up over 71% of all telecoms connections at the end of 2009; an eight percentage point increase over the five-year period. This increase is likely to continue as the number of mobile-connected devices – particularly focused on data-centric services - continues to expand. Data volumes over mobile networks in 2009 increased by 240%.

At the end of 2010 15% of adults live in a home that has a mobile phone but no landline.

Mobile only households in Scotland was 17%, in Wales it was 19%, in Northern Ireland it was 15% and England 13%.

Across the UK 96% of people lived in postcode districts with at least 90% 2G area coverage from one or more operators. This figure increases to 99% in England but population coverage levels are lower in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which is a reflection of large areas of low population density and areas where hilly or mountainous terrain limits the range of cellular masts. 3G coverage is relatively similar to 2G coverage (95%), although lower in Northern Ireland (where 54% of people live in postcode districts with at least 90% 3G area coverage from one or more operators.

Mobile phone take up in the UK was over 90%, England and Northern Ireland 92%, Scotland 86%, and Wales 87%.

Use Of Mobile Devices

Traditionally, people have used their mobile phone predominantly for communicating by voice or text. Other uses, such as listening to downloaded audio or accessing the internet or other features, account for 7% of total phone time in 2009. However, this pattern of use is changing, as mobiles are becoming the new personal computers of choice.

Patterns differ by age group; only 22% of the total time that 16-24 year olds spend on the phone is on voice calls, compared with 58% for people aged 55. Text messaging accounts for half of 16-24 year olds’ mobile phone use, and social networking for a further 13%.

Emailing by mobile phone is more common among those aged 25-54 than it is among 16-24s, suggesting that it is likely to be associated with work.

Fixed line calls accounted for 129 minutes per person per month, while people made an average of 125 minutes on outgoing mobile calls a month.

The number of mobile connections continued to rise in 2009, partly driven by the increasing take-up of mobile broadband connections using a USB dongle or data card, which grew by 1.6 million connections in 2009. Industry estimates (source: Spider Online) suggest 20% of computers will be tablets by 2014.

In the two years to March 2010, the number of people in the UK accessing the internet on their mobile more than doubled, with data from Nielsen finding that around 13.5 million adults, or around 28% of UK adults with a mobile phone, reported that they visited at least one site on their mobile in March 2010.

The large majority of mobile handsets in use are capable of providing internet access. MobileSQUARED estimate that 91% of handsets in use in mid-2010 were categorised either as ‘smartphones’ (phones that use an advanced operating system that facilitates the development and installation of third party applications which can be downloaded via the internet) or ‘feature phones’ (phones which are less advanced and support a simpler range of applications). Just 9% of handsets in use were categorised as ‘legacy phones’; incapable of accessing the internet. Today, a quarter of mobiles in the UK are smart phones, but by 2015 (source: Enders Analysis) 75% of all phones will be smart phones.

The smartphone is the new personal computer of choice. Worldwide shipment of smart phones was 100.9 million devices in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to 92.1 million PCs (source: IDC).

Source (unless otherwise indicated): 'The Communications Market 2010', Ofcom
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/753567/UK-telecoms.pdf