Britons lead the world in using the latest TV technology,...

Britons lead the world in using the latest TV technology, including accessing TV online and owning smart televisions and digital video recorders, the U.K. Office of Communications said Thursday in an international communications market report (http://xrl.us/bn59vp). The report compared the U.K. with France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China. U.K. consumers are most likely to access TV over the Internet, with 23 percent of Internet users claiming to do it every week, driven by the popularity of catch-up services such as BBC iPlayer and ITV Player, it said. The U.S., where 17 percent of Internet users said they access TV content online, came second. But despite the increase in online TV availability, scheduled linear TV remains popular, with minutes of viewing per person up among most of the countries surveyed, Ofcom said. Italy and the U.S. led the list, with the U.K. third, it said. By the end of 2011, 99 percent of U.K. homes had digital TV, surpassed only by Spain, whose digital switchover is now complete. Satellite TV was the largest platform in the U.K. (44 percent), while terrestrial TV was the main platform in 38 percent of TV homes, it said. Value-added services such as digital video recorders and high definition TV continue to grow, with Britain having the greatest uptake in DVRs in 2011, followed by the U.S. The U.K. also had one of the biggest percentages of TV homes with HDTV, higher than France, Germany and Japan but behind the U.S. The U.K. had the highest rate of digital radio take-up, Ofcom said. The fastest-growing radio markets are India, Brazil, Russia and China, but radio markets in Sweden, the U.S. and Germany generate the most revenue per head of population. Spending on laptop and desktop Internet advertising is highest in Britain, followed by Australia, the regulator said. The U.S. mobile Internet advertising spend grew by 2.5 times, reaching Japan’s level, it said. U.K. Internet users access the Web via laptop more than those in any other country, it said. The most searched for term online, except in Japan, Russia and China, was “facebook,” it said. In the telecom arena, U.K. users consume the most mobile data per connection, with 424 MB of data downloaded per mobile connection in 2011, it said. The U.K. is also a leader in text messaging, with the average person sending 199 SMS messages per month last year, up 17 percent from 2010 numbers. Fixed-voice revenue, however, fell in all countries, and fixed-voice call volumes dropped in all except France. Five percent of U.K. broadband connections were superfast (advertised speeds of 30 Mbps or more) by the end of 2011, it said. Other findings included that total telecom, TV, post and radio sector revenues rose 7.3 percent, reaching $2.1 trillion; and that global advertising expenditure rose nearly 4 percent, to $481 billion, the highest since 2007.