UK officially nation of mobile phone users

IF YOU NEEDED PROOF that Blighty is a nation of mobile phone users, Ofcom has now provided it. There are now over 70 million connections whilst the UK's population stands at around 60 million.

So nearly ten million people have more than one mobile handset on the go. And 85 per cent of the adult population now have mobiles, too.

There's a drawback. Up to six per cent of mobile phone users are unhappy with their mobile phone supplier. Which translates to up to four million people.

Of those, Ofcom appears to have heard from 1.4 million of them – making mobile the second most complained about product in the UK economy. It didn't say which was the most complained about product. Holidays?

Ofcom describes Blighty as, "The most competitive mobile industry in Europe – with five operators and a healthy number of virtual network operators."

It also means that the mobile sector now produces more revenue than fixed voice and broadband services combined.

While the number of households with a fixed line phone has now dropped to 88 per cent and some 70 per cent of people make mobile phone calls even when they are at home, mobile calls won't actually outnumber fixed calls until at least 2010, it reckons.

Buried away in Ofcom's report are concerns about mobile broadband. Ofcom intends to consult with the industry about so-called 'not spots' with no coverage and wants to look at ways to build out 3G coverage.

Also hidden away in the consultation document are suggestions as to how to bring down the real cost of making a mobile call and one of the possibilities is the introduction of charging for receiving mobile calls whilst in your home network.

Considering just how unpopular such charges are when applied to 'roaming' calls, Ofcom is obviously intending to increase the number of complaints it gets to about 1.4 million people.

Incidentally, Ofcom has also gone all trendy and introduced a blog here. µ