UK Population 60 million, UK Mobile Phone Connections 70 million

Davey Winder
Friday, 29 August 2008 20:52

Your IT - Mobility

Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, has today published a new consultation document which reveals there are 10 million more mobile phone connections than there are people in the United Kingdom...

Ofcom's Mobile Sector Assessment document was published today, and makes for some fascinating reading.

The disparity between total UK population and total number of mobile phone connections becomes even more interesting when you discover that the 70 million phones figure actually refers to 84 percent of people aged 8 or over.

It kind of reinforces the feeling that we all know someone with more than one currently active mobile phone account. I will admit to having three active mobile phone accounts myself, and I am not even a drug dealer!

No wonder then, that the mobile sector in the UK is now larger by revenue than the fixed and broadband sectors combined according to Ofcom.

Unfortunately, it would appear that around four million people are not happy with their mobile phone provider. I have to admit I was surprised at this particular figure, representing around six percent of mobile phone users.

I would have thought it would have been much higher than this. Still, us Brits did ourselves proud and 1.4 million of us managed to muster enough anger to complain to Ofcom about our poor mobile phone service.

And that, Ofcom reckons, makes it the second most complained about product we have! Before you ask, Ofcom did not name names nor respond to my request for details of the most complained about product in the UK.

It probably won't matter for much longer though, as Ofcom did say that with regards to mobile phones "the number of complaints received by Ofcom and other agencies, in particular about bills and cases of mis-selling, appears to be rising."