New research released recently has found that compared to everywhere else in the UK, Wales has the largest number of users that only use a mobile handset instead of using a land line.

This change in the way Wales communicates does not necessary mean that it is becoming a more digital nation but may mean that rather than pay for regular landline costs many of the poorer households would prefer to use pay-as-you-go mobile handsets.

Based on a Communications Market Report from Ofcom an average of 14 percent of homes in the UK are mobile-only, but in Wales this figure rises to 19 percent, which is almost one in every five homes.

A member of the communication regulator Ofcom, Rhodri Williams advised “Of course, you have got middle-class people who decide, ‘we’ll have a mobile each rather than [a landline] for the house’, but the bulk of that will be people on low incomes. I don’t think it’s a thing you want to be shouting from the rooftops.”

Also concerned was a member of the Communications Consumer Panel in Wales, Kim Brook, who said “People in Wales risk missing out on the social and economic benefits of being online because they have limited access to fixed-line broadband. The growing number of low-income, mobile-only households in Wales is a further barrier – without a landline people can’t access the internet and mobile broadband is still in its infancy.”

The recent Ofcom report showed that the UK as a whole had a broadband take-up of 71 percent compared to 64 percent in Wales, which is a drop in the gap from 10 down to 7 percent which Williams believed was a move in the right direction.

Mobile broadband was also beginning to be taken up by more Welsh users with 16 percent of the country now using it. With an 18 percent take-up it was Southeast Wales that had the largest proportion of users and then 14 percent in North and Mid Wales, and 12 percent in Southwest Wales.

Source – Wales Online