Nearly One Million Households Have Free Satellite TV Says Ofcom Report

Telecommunications Regulator Ofcom has revealed in its Q2 2008 "Communications Market: Digital Progress" Report that more than 900,000 households now own a free Satellite TV service ether from BSkyB, Freesat or other Free to Air providers.

According to Ofcom, half of the increase comes from Freesat, the new free-to-air satellite service launched by BBC and ITV - with more than half being HD units - while the bulk of the remaining are ex-Sky subscribers who have chosen to revert back to Sky's own Free to Air satellite bundle.

The report also underlined the fact that nearly nine out of ten UK households now use digital TV with a growing majority switching even their secondary TV sets to digital as well.

This comes as the cost of Freeview set top boxes - which power more than 16 million TVs across UK - has plummeted to record low. Our readers have reported seeing PCWorld selling a Ferguson Freeview box for a mere £4.97.

Nearly 20 million so called secondary TV sets out of the 35 million estimated on the market, have now been converted to Digital according to the report which also identified a surge in the number of televisions sold with Built-in Freeview receivers.

Between April and June this year, more than 1.4 million were sold compared to less than 900,000 over the same period last year.