Written question asked by Mike Weir (Scottish National Party) on Thursday, 15 December 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 19 December 2005. It was answered by Alun Michael (Labour) on Thursday, 12 January 2006 on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry.

Telephone Main Lines (Broadband)

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many telephone main lines are in use in (a) Scotland, (b) Wales, (c) each of the English regions and (d) Northern Ireland; and how many are broadband in each case.

Answer: The information is not available in the form requested, but Ofcom's Communications Market report 2005 showed that in the UK at the end of 2004 there were:"33.7 million fixed line connections;""61.2 million mobile connections;""15.9 million internet connections;""6.3 million broadband connections."By September 2005, the number of broadband connections in the UK had risen to 8.l million¹. Great progress has been made towards providing broadband access across the UK as a whole, where 99.6 per cent. of households are now connected to a broadband enabled exchange. This is considerable progress against the 2003 (80 per cent.) and 2004 (93 per cent.) figures."¹Source:" Ovum, an analyst and consulting company in the telecommunication sector.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 39199; 441 c790W
Session: 2005-06
Subjects: Broadband Northern Ireland Scotland Telecommunications Wales Telephones Telephone exchanges
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk