The global communications market reached £876 billion in revenue last year with the UK contributing £39 billion or 4.4 percent of that, the fourth largest market behind the US, Japan and Germany. That’s according to media regulator Ofcom, which has released its third international communications market report, which takes in the five years to end of 2007 and surveys seven countries. The UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Japan accounted for half of the £876 billion total. Here’s a summary of the report’s key points:

—Online ads: It may come as news to the UK publishers who continually struggle to make big returns from online, but according to Ofcom online makes up 19 percent of UK advertising spend, a bigger share than in any other country in the world. Sweden comes next with 17 percent and only the US, Japan and Canada can boast a share higher than 10 per cent.

—Broadband connections: The UK is placed third among similar-sized European countries in terms of broadband connections, with one connection for every four people, behind the Netherlands with 25 percent and Sweden with 21 percent penetration. But Brits spend more time online than anyone else in Europe – 14 hours a week on average, just behind the US with 15. Revenue from broadband subscriptions grew by 14 percent, compared to 20 percent in 2006. Revenue for the telco business grew by five percent last year in the UK, driven by mobile and broadband subscriptions.

—Digital TV and paid subscriptions: The UK had the highest rate of terrestrial-to-digital TV migration in 2007, and 86 percent of all TVs were digital-enabled, up from 77 percent in 2006 and ahead of the US where 70 percent of TVs are digital-ready. In the Netherlands and Sweden, the analogue signal has already been switched off. More people were buying pay TV services last year, taking the amount of households with some sort of paid subscriptions to 47 percent, with revenue per head growing to £172, a £7 rise year on year. A clear sign of things to come, 2007 was the first year the global TV industry did not make the majority of its £166 billion revenues from advertising.

—Digital radio: The development of the UK digital radio sector has been beset by problems, but the audience keeps on growing. In each of the seven countries Ofcom surveys, at least a third of the population claimed to listen to online radio. France came out on top with 37 percent of people polled answering “oui”, followed by Germany with 34 percent and the UK with 33 percent. Of the seven countries polled, 13 percent said they were listening to more radio since getting internet at home, but 23 percent also agreed that they now listened to less radio since going online, perhaps because they have enough distraction. Global radio revenues reached £23.6 billion in 2007, with the UK making up £1.3 billion.

More on mobile from the report at mocoNews.net...