International Telecom

摘要

Britain's communications sector compares favorably with that of 16 other nations around thernworld, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) said in its 2012 international communications reportrn(http://xrl.us/bqaaxs). The study benchmarks the U.K. communications sector against other countries tornsee how it's doing — France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands,Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China. The survey found that the sector's total globalrnrevenue, including telecom, TV, radio and post, was around $2 trillion last year, up 2.5 percent from 2011,rnit said. TV subscriptions generated the biggest and fastest-growing proportion of the total revenue, it said.rnFixed-line connections continued to fall, but were most resilient in the U.K., where many customers stillrnget broadband services over fixed lines, it said. Mobile takeup continued to exceed population size in allrnthe countries surveyed except China, it said. Excluding Japan, which has a very high takeup of advancedrnfeature phones not readily available in other countries, the U.S. was the only one to report a smartphonernadoption level of less than 50 percent in Ofcom's online survey, it said. People in the U.K. are most likelyrnto trust online retailers than those in the other countries, it said. In the TV and audiovisual area, Brazil,rnRussia, India and China continued to have the largest annual growth, it said. The U.K. leads the way inrndigital conversion and was one of only three countries to have 100 percent of all main TV sets switched torndigital in 2012, it said. U.K. consumers are embracing value-added services, with HDTV and digitalrnvideo recording penetration the highest among the European nations included in the research, Ofcom said.rnBritish consumers are more likely to watch catch-up TV on smart TVs, mobile phones and tablets, butrnscheduled linear TV is also still popular, with Britons watching four hours per day, the regulator said.rnOther findings included: (1) U.K. residents are the most frequent online shoppers and the most likely tornaccess TV content over the Internet. (2) Social networks are still among the most searched-for terms onrnthe Internet, with Facebook the most searched-for term for 14 of the 17 comparison countries. (3) MobilernInternet users in the U.S. and U.K. are the most active social networkers. (4) Radio revenue was up forrnthe third consecutive year in the 17 countries analyzed. (5) The U.K. had the second-lowest proportion ofrntotal telecom revenue generated by data services in 2012, with Japan leading the way.