What percentage of British households have cable or satellite television? How many channels are available?
According to OfCOM, cable was the primary viewing platform in 12.5% of homes in the UK. These figures only include digital TV, but that now accounts for over 94% of cable transmission. There are about 25 million homes in the UK.
There are probably over 200 channels available…
But it should be noted that many of them are time-shifted versions of a smaller number of distinct channels. Documentary channels in particular often come with “+1 hr” delayed versions. Pay per view movies can take up six or more channels with staggered starts so that you have some control over when you watch.
There’s also several companies offering something I’ve seen in other European countries as well but I don’t know if it exists in the USA: TV over the phone cable (not over optical). It’s like ADSL (and usually sold in a 3for1 pack along with DSL and phone) but using the phone cable to send the TV information.
I’m surprised that the percentage is so low in Britain. As of 2001, 64 to 87% of U.S. households had cable or satellite TV, depending on income bracket.
Satellite, which pretty much means Sky TV, has always been more popular than cable. According to Ofcom (our FCC, roughly), 50% of households have subscription satellite or cable, 40% have non-subscription terrestrial/satellite (about 30 channels for DTT, more for satellite), 10% have just the 5 analogue channels (4 in some areas).
It’s difficult to make direct comparisons, because the presence of the BBC has a major effect on the British market. 90% of British homes get what they call “multichannel”, but how those channels compare to “basic cable” is difficult to quantify. If you want live Premier League football or latest Hollywood movies, you need subscription satellite or cable. For other things, it’s not so clear cut. A lot of it is available on non-subscription TV. So maybe there’s less impetus to pay the extra subscription fee, since we already have to effectively subscribe to the BBC.
I think the reason that the figures for cable penetration are so low is that it’s never made much money for the companies and the cost of actually installing the infrastructure is very high. When cable TV started a few years ago there were several companies offering the service. One after one they merged to try and save money until now there is just one (Virgin Media).
Its not just the cost of infrastructure, which indeed is extremely high, its also the operating licence.There was an open bid competition some years ago and prices were very high indeed.
We have a network of digital off air transmission which allow normal tv channels and then also for organisations such as BBC to offer multi-channels, almost like sub-channels where they may retransmit one sport event all day - for example the MotoGP bike racing - these are not true channels in themselves but much more like time shifted channels but with only one or two programmes.
The digital channels are not quite free - you have to buy a digital box but there is no extra cost for many of these channels - you can of course subscribe to certain channels that are receivable by the digiboxes.
Many f us are connected through broadband and as such we can also receive web tv, again the BBC is a big player in this but the commercial channels have just started to transmit (webcast?) in this format.
But I think what “multichannel” means in the British context is “more than just the 5 free-to-air networks”. Basically, anyone who has Freeview/Freesat, Sky, and/or Virgin. That’s who they mean when they talk about multichannel viewers.