Every day in 2007, an average UK consumer spent 7 hours and 9 minutes watching TV, on the phone, using the internet or using other telecom services, Ofcom reports. But the average UK household spend on communications in 2007 was 93.63 pounds a month - a fall of 1.53 pounds on 2006. TV remains the most popular pastime, with the average person watching for 3 hours and 38 minutes a day in 2007.

US businesses are expected to spend $688 bln on information and communications technology in 2008. Small businesses will boost ICT budgets by up to 8% a year, spending $280 bln by 2012, Compass Intelligence says.

The 20 largest cable and telephone companies added a net 887,000 high-speed Internet subscribers in Q2 2008, according to Leichtman Research Group. Cable companies now have 35.3 mln broadband customers, compared with 29.7 mln at the phone companies. AT&T remains the country’s largest Internet service provider, with 14.7 mln customers, ahead of Comcast with 14.4 mln.

According to IDC, over 70% of respondents in markets such as Australia, China, and India indicated that solutions pertaining to the network were either important or very important. Total spending in Network services (which includes Network Consulting & Integration Services (NCIS) and Network Management (NM)) will grow from $4.7 bln in 2007 to $9.1 bln in 2012 at a compound annual growth rate of 13.7% from 2007-2012. This bids well for companies such as IBM, HP, and Dimension Data (including Datacraft), ranked by IDC as the top players (in terms of revenue) in APEJ for the calendar year 2007.

Total communications spending is projected to increase 5.4% to $923.91 bln in 2008, as strong gains in the institutional and alternative media sectors offset the downward pressure of declining traditional advertising spending, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson. The industry’s primary growth driver in 2008 is the institutional sector, particularly professional & business information services and education & training media. Institutional media spending is expected to increase 8.5% to $245.39 bln in 2008. Total spending on communications will continue to outpace U.S. economic growth during the 2007-2012 period, increasing at a 6.2% CAGR compared with a 5.6% CAGR for nominal GDP. Communications will be the second-fastest growing of the 15 U.S. economic sectors during the forecast period and will exceed $1 trln in 2010, with spending reaching $1.183 trln in 2012, according to the VSS Forecast.

Fiber providers added 4.2 mln customers in Q1 2008, while 2.5 mln customers signed up for cable modems, according to Point Topic. The bulk of the new fiber subscribers are in China, where 2.5 mln signed up, for a total of 16.7 mln. US is in #4 place after Japan and Korea. Point Topic counted 303,000 new US fiber customers, for a total of 2.6 mln.

The router market in EMEA continued to grow in Q1 2008. The enterprise router market grew by 8.4% from $933 mln in 4Q 2007 to $1.01 bln in Q1 2008, according to IDC. Compared to Q1 2007, the router market achieved a revenue increase of 15% from $879 mln to $1.01 bln in Q1 2008. High-end router sales went up by 13% from $589 mln to $665 mln in Q1 2008, driven by service providers investing in offering new services such as IP television (IPTV) and video on demand (VoD) to their end customers. SOHO segment reported the highest decline of 10.3% from $38 mln to $34 mln in Q1 2008.

P2P applications represent 44% of all bandwidth consumed on networks operated by North American Internet service providers, up from around 41% in 2007, according to Sandvine.

Largest cable companies in the US added 1.19 mln broadband subscribers in Q1 2008, according to Leichtman Research Group. Phone companies added 1.01 mln DSL customers in Q1 2008. Since Q3 2004, phone companies had been adding subscribers faster than cable, closing in on cable’s lead in total subscribers. But that lead is now widening, with cable companies having a total of 34.7 mln subscribers compared with 29.5 mln at the phone companies.

Telecommunications market of Asian countries (defined as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam) will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36% from 2007-2011, according to IDC. The data segment, which includes mobile data services, fixed line corporate data and Internet access services, grew strongly at 258% year-on-year in 2006, reaching $952 mln. While these four country markets will remain generally voice-centric throughout the forecast period, revenue share of the data segment will improve significantly from 17% in 2006 to over 30% by 2011. The mobile data segment from the four countries is anticipated to escalate at 41% CAGR from 2007-2011, driven by expected growth in SMS usage. Fixed lines data, on the other hand, will grow at 24% CAGR from 2007-2011.

Small and medium businesses in Pakistan invested more than $1.5 bln on ICT (info-communications technology) in 2007, AMI Partners said. Only 14% of SBs in Pakistan have adopted computers at present.

European Union added 19 mln broadband lines in 2007, the equivalent of more than 50,000 households a day. Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and France all now have higher broadband penetration than the US. European telecommunications market is now worth 300 bln euros, or $474 bln, 2% of European gross domestic product. EU broadband rates vary from 35.6 lines per hundred inhabitants in Denmark to 7.6 in Bulgaria.

Colombian telecommunications services market earned revenues of over $5.48 bln in 2006 and estimates this to reach $7.12 bln in 2012. Going forward, the voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) segment is likely to emerge as the fastest growing market segment, followed by the broadband and Internet access segment. During the forecast period, the VoIP segment is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 77.0% and the number of lines is expected to grow from 22,560 to 504,509, Frost & Sullivan says.

According to TIA, the US telecom industry will grow at an average annual rate of 7.2% in the period 2008-2011, reaching $1.3 trillion in 2011, compared with an average rate of 10%, reaching $3.6 trillion, for the rest of the world. Growth in the US industry will accelerate to 9.3% in 2008 from 8.3% in 2007, partly due to spending on network upgrades and a government spectrum auction.

Worldwide router market growth accelerated in 2007, and router sales are projected to grow by almost 50% over the next 5 years to reach $17 bln by 2012, Dell’Oro Group says.

Worldwide IT market will grow 5% in 2008, down from 2007 pace of 6%, according to IDC. Global IT spending is now projected to reach $1.38 trillion in 2008, up from just over $1.3 trillion in 2007. In the United States, growth is expected to weaken to 4% in 2008, compared with 6% in 2007. A 5% decline is expected for the US PC market in 2008, following 2007 growth of 2%.

More than 50% of directory assistance users underestimated the actual cost of mobile directory assistance charges; of that group, almost 19% thought it was free, according to V-ENABLE. Another 18% didn’t know the cost at all. Roughly 70% were wrong when citing the cost of actual fees.

Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) telecom services market was worth over $215 bln in 2007, according to IDC. In terms of infrastructure, the networking equipment market grew 13% to $6.6 bln in 2007 while the carrier segment remained a stable market at $32 bln.

Small and medium businesses (SMBs, or companies with up to 999 employees) in the United Kingdom spent $12 bln on IT services in 2007, up some 8% over 2006. Up to 29% of the over $40 bln in IT and telecom spending by UK SMBs went towards IT services. In terms of spending, software development and integration, day-to-day IT management and process management are dominant categories for SMBs in the UK. As demand for third-party services continues to broaden, expenditures for services in other IT categories are increasing. Total SMB spending for managed security services reached $42 mln in 2007 and storage services climbed to a substantial $388 mln, up some 20% over in 2007.

The communications industry is projected to spend $347.5 bln in 2008 on IT (hardware, software, IT services, internal services and telecommunications). The compound annual growth rate from 2006 through 2011 will be 3.8%. A key growth area in 2008 will be process management, Gartner says.

The global market for operations support systems (OSS) — the computing and software IT infrastructure that performs engineering, provisioning, and management functions in telecommunications networks — will exceed $46 bln in 2008, explains Insight Research.

Revenue from softswitch architecture in Asia/Pacific, excluding Japan, will grow by 36% in 2007, to $1.5 bln. It will keep growing strongly, to hit $3.6 bln in 2011, Gartner says.

According to Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the networking and telecommunications industries, shipments of Fibre Channel switch ports continued to rise in Q3 2007 and were up over 30% compared to the same period a year ago. The report indicates that HBA shipments remained flat for the third consecutive quarter.

Wholesale and retail circuit-switched wireline voice revenue will decline at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7% according to ATLANTIC-ACM. Wireline data revenue will grow by a CAGR of 8.7%, offsetting declines and holding overall wireline revenues virtually flat, or at a CAGR of 0.1%.

On average, 60% of European broadband consumer households would prefer using an integrated fixed/mobile voice service such as CVS. 70%-80% of consumers favor unified messaging. Consumers strongly prefer network-based address books, flat-rate service bundles, unlimited local/national calling, and a single supplier of services.