Welcome to Switched On, your whistle-stop tour around the big news stories breaking in digital communications this month. Forward this email to a friend

This year's Intellect Consumer Electronics Conference brought together all elements of the UK consumer electronics market. During the day our first-class line up of speakers looked at the new technologies and consumer behaviours that drive the UK as the biggest technology market in Europe.

ERTV, the online TV channel from www.ERTWeekly.com, was filming at this year's Intellect Consumer Electronics Conference and ERT's web editor, Sean Hannam, spoke to some of the speakers, including Intellect's Laurence Harrison and Sharp's Paul Hide. To see a general video overview of the conference, click here.

Some good news from out there It's roughly a year since the first rumblings of the credit crunch started to be heard and the unhappy consequences continue to be unleashed on unsuspecting consumers. However, despite sky-high petrol prices and an economic downturn across much of the globe GfK predict that worldwide expenditure on consumer electronic equipment will boom again this year. The respected technology market analysts predict that global sales will hit at a massive $678bn, up 9.4 per cent on last year's total, with greater sales coming out of the developing 'BRIC' countries. The report goes on to say that whilst some mature markets might suffer due to price erosion and lower value in sales, this will be compensated for by sales made in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) markets who will invest on scale in traditional CE items including cell phones, LCD displays and MP3 players.   "After two years of double digit growth GfK/CEA forecasts a healthy growth of 9.4 per cent in 2008 over 2007; the current year looks bright for the technical consumer equipment market," says the report. Amidst the economic gloom then, a ray of good news for CE manufacturers.

Get involved in Intellect's CE Council»

Is this it? Back at home the perennial problem about next generation broadband - who pays for it? - came a step closer to being unpicked as BT announced a £1.5 billion programme to roll out fibre based, super-fast broadband to up to 10m UK homes by 2012. The plans, still extremely dependent on regulatory approval, will see BT delivering a range of services with top speeds of up to 100 Mb/s with the potential for speeds of more than 1,000 Mb/s in the future. There are still many questions to be answered yet, not least on the matter of funding with BT making references to Regional Development Agencies as potential partners in the deployment, but CEO Ian Livingston was bullish and positive about the planned roll out. "Broadband has boosted the UK economy and is now an essential part of our customers' lives" he said. "We now want to make a step-change in broadband provision which will offer faster speeds than ever before. This marks the beginning of a new chapter in Britain's broadband story."

The Convergence Conversation»

Web no threat to TV - apparently One of the killer applications that Next Generation Broadband would certainly look to deliver is video content and with speeds of higher than 100mbps being bandied around, some of the pointy heads doing scenario planning for content distribution in the medium to long term are predicting that TV over the web could replace broadcast TV as the primary distribution method. 'Not so' said leading academic Patrick Barwise, emeritus professor of management and marketing at the London Business School, who defined as 'B*llocks 2.0' claims about the threat to traditional media from innovations such as social networking and internet television. In a refreshingly straight-talking address to a London Business School audience Barwise went on to say that 'Television is not a market going into catastrophic decline, advertising is bad, but it is not falling off a cliff' and that 'there is next to no demand for on-demand. The argument is wildly out of proportion about how important this is for television.'

Read Intellect's fourth convergence report - the blizzard of content»

Switchover stats And on the subject of good, old-fashioned, no frills, lean-back television viewing, some interesting numbers from Ofcom were released about the UK's digital switchover. The process starts ramping up from now with switchover taking place in the Borders before the end of this year, and then being followed by the West country and Granada in 2009 and latest statistics detail a high level of penetration already achieved. Ofcom's 'Digital Progress Report' has 68 per cent of the 60 million television sets in the UK digitally linked via cable, satellite or digital terrestrial as well as a showing that the total number of digitally-linked sets has grown by around 7 million from 33.5 million to 40.5 million over the past twelve months as householders focus on converting secondary television sets to digital. Key trends for the first quarter of 2008 also include the fact that there over 9.6 million homes with DTT on their main television set - an increase of almost 1.3 million over the past twelve months. So far, so good.

The Digital Communications Marketing Group»

Mobile video - again Mobile video has been discussed in these pastures before but it's worth another mention this month particularly as the BBC Trust has opened a consultation on plans to put BBC TV and radio channels on to mobiles. The consultation, which closes on August 22, follows a controversial year-long trial that started last April in which BBC services were available on the 3G networks of Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and 3. In its proposal, the BBC argues that it is 'uniquely placed to drive mainstream use of mobile television' - for which read 'the only guys who are likely to make it happen in the short term' in a similar way that the BBC iPlayer has sparked the online catch-up TV market or Freeview has promoted take-up of digital terrestrial television. The proposal is made despite the fact that the trials proved only tiny amounts of usage. ITN, unsurprisingly, has argued that the launch of ad-free BBC services will crush the development of commercial models of mobile advertising by rivals. In response the beeb argues that - in line with its remit - mobile allows it to increase the reach of BBC services and hit currently under-served groups such as 16 to 34-year-olds. The trust will have to consider whether a public value test should be applied to the BBC's proposals.

The Convergence Conversation»