The UK is top among 12 industrialised nations in the adoption of digital technology,  offering the cheapest mobile, television and broadband rates, according to a report on the extent of the spread of different technologies across the world.

According to the `International Communications Market Report', published by the British communications regulator Ofcom, the average broadband uptake across developed nations was 56 per cent of households in 2007, with Britain taking its place at 60 per cent.

About 86 per cent of homes in Britain are able to receive digital transmission on their main set, while 30 per cent have digital video recorders. In the United States, pay television services and digital recorders capable of skipping ads have become so popular that, in 2007, for the first time subscription grosses caught up with advertising grosses.

Britain has the highest density of high definition TV sets in Europe, but less than the US and Canada.

Though well behind the US, the digital music market of Britain (8 per cent of total music sales market of the country) is in a superior or advanced position to the rest of Europe apart from Spain.

Half of the UK uses sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace; and 43 per cent of the country indulges in uploading photos to the internet.

In Britain, online advertising comprises nearly a fifth of total advertising spends and, for the first time, advertising represented less than half of television income.
The Irish spend the most time on their mobile phones and send the most text messages per head in the world. In 2007, they spent 179 minutes on average on their mobiles each month and sent nearly double the number of text messages sent by people in the UK.
 
The US has gone along the course of internet use most prominently, with Americans spending on average a little over 15 hours a week online, followed by the UK at just under 14 hours a week.

The US and Britain were also ushering in the new age of watching TV online, while Canadians were at the forefront of social networking.  Overall, more women than men were using the Internet, the report said.

Mobile phones were becoming more important to people across the globe, especially in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, which together registered some 216 million new mobile subscriptions in 2007, with the new connections added by China alone, at 88 million, exceeding the total number of subscriptions in Britain, the report noted.