ONLINE RETAILING HITS £4BN RECORD AS BROADBAND OPTIONS AND CONSUMER CONFIDENCE GROW
The future of UK shopping is looking increasingly virtual.
That is the hard evidence presented by figures from industry body Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) that showed that UK online retail sales broke the £4 billion a month barrier for the first time in July 2007.
This represents an increase of 80% on the same month last year, in sharp contrast to High Street sales that grew by only 3.3% in July to reach £20 billion a month. So what’s happening? Is the UK finally deserting the high street?
IT’S RAINING – TIME TO GO SHOPPING!
The wet weather that characterised the summer of 2007 was one important contributory factor in persuading consumers to surf the Net rather than venture outdoors. Purchases in preparation for August holidays – such as digital cameras, MP3 players, laptops and clothes – also added to the boom. So too did sales of household items, in some cases replacements for those lost by thousands in the devastating floods that hit the West Country and Yorkshire.
A FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE
But aside from these topical drivers, IMRG’s retail analysts are seeing the surge not as a blip on the sales chart but as real proof that consumers’ confidence – and pleasure – in shopping online is strengthening and reaching a new maturity and sophistication. DRIVEN BY BROADBAND
At its core is the increasingly easy availability of faster, more reliable broadband services at cost-effective prices. These high-bandwidth channels are, in turn, giving e-retailers the scope to attract, excite and intrigue customers with ever more inventive multimedia websites, slick applications and super-rich content delivery. You can read more about IMRG's July 2007 market findings
here.
READ BETWEEN THE LINES
Future broadband - the connect family of wholesale broadband products
To meet the needs of the fast-changing UK marketplace – now and into the future – we are evolving our portfolio to provide you with the next generation of broadband services.
The result is the Connect family of wholesale broadband products. Scheduled to start trials in January 2008 and with market launch planned for April 2008, these will offer improved downstream speeds, together with greater stability and resilience: the essentials required for new, richer bandwidth-hungry applications such as sophisticated online retailing, video delivery and TV programming.
Connect services will also be more easily configurable and offer higher levels of support. This means that you can have the prospect of being able to generate new revenues through offering a wider portfolio of integrated services to your business and consumer broadband and data customers. 
Read more about the forthcoming trial of Connect and the future of the broadband market in an interview with Angus Flett in this issue of Between The Lines