OfCom: The Communication Market 2008

You can't help but love the annual Communications Market Report from the Office of Coomunications; it provides massive amounts of detail and information on the UK's communication market. As with last year's document, it is a rather large document (365 pages), so not for the faint hearted. Luckily, however, the BBC have published a nice summary with the most interesting graphs.

My favourite graph is the "Time Spent Using Communications Services", it's interesting to see how your own usage compares to others:

Personally I was shocked at how low internet usage was...at the moment, due to the Olympic coverage, I tend to be online for a couple of hours before I even get out of bed! Closer inspection of the OfCom document finds that the 24 mins does not include time spent watching streaming media, which partially explains the low number of internet minutes. My personal graph would look some thing like this (for personal/non-work use):

Whilst it seems as though there are not enough hours in the day, the portability of laptops like the Eee PC means that we can always be online. It is a rare occasion when I am watching the TV without the internet, whilst I only really listen to the radio when cooking the dinner. My fixed phone usage is zero due to the phone line still not being connected by Virgin!

I thought that the most surprising finding was the continued rise of SMS use (up 28% on last year). Personally I think it must be close to a peak now; with an increasing number of mobile internet applications becoming available, such as Nokia Chat and other instant messaging services.