UK Broadband Take-up Almost Doubles in a Year

New figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the UK broadband market has almost doubled in the past 12 months. In April, 27.2% of internet connections were now broadband, compared to just 14.5% a year earlier.

Broadband connections continue to increase their market share rapidly, whilst dialup connections decline – there are now less dial up subscriptions than when the index started in January 2001.

“The year-on-year decrease to April 2004 was 6.8 per cent for dial-up connections with a decrease of 1.9 per cent from March 2004 to April 2004,” the ONS said in a statement.

The growth is being driven by new pricing plans, increased availability and more demanding applications such as music, video and online gaming.

Dial-up internet access still accounts for 72.8% of internet connections, so there is still a lot of growth for broadband still to come.

The Office for National Statistics

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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?