4.8 Million Broadband Users by 2005

“With 12.6m homes now connected to the Internet there is a still a huge opportunity available for telecoms companies to persuade people to upgrade onto faster connections, especially as we are seeing a strong interest and demand by consumers to do so.” said Colin Shaddick, director at Continental Research.

Ofcom estimate that broadband subscriptions currently stand at 3.2 million (Continental estimate 3.8). Given the rate at which people have been swapping over – because of the range of providers, competitive price cuts, and increase in quality, ease and reliability in the past twelve months – another 1.6 million subscribers by this time next year doesn’t seem too much of a stretch.

Continental Research

Ofcom’s Broadband Update, January 2004

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?