The report, which quotes figures for the final quarter of 2003, says that the total number of digital households has grown to 12.3m, representing 50.2% of UK households, as an additional 423,000 households went digital.
A further 4% of households subscribe to analogue cable, bringing the total number of households receiving some form of multichannel television to 54.4%.
Freeview, the BBC- and BSkyB-backed free-to-air venture, has increased its uptake by 41%, with an increase of 866,500 households receiving the service. At the end of December 2003 Freeview's audience was estimated to be around 2.9m. Ofcom claims that the number of free-to-air digital services, aside from Freeview, has fallen during the year due to the BBC's decision to stop encrypting its signal on satellite and the withdrawal of the "solus" card scheme.
However, the total number of free-to-air digital households has increased by 8.4% to more than 3.2m. This figure includes viewers using Freeview adapters, old ITV Digital set-top boxes, IDTV sets, solus cards and also ex-Sky subscribers who use their set-top boxes to view free-to-view channels.
Sky has seen a 2.6% increase in subscribers, reaching 7.2m homes in the UK and Ireland at the end of the quarter.
Digital and analogue cable television has remained stable, according to the report, at around 3.2m with digital cable subscribers taking up around 70% of the total.
The government wants to covert 95% of homes to digital TV by 2010 and Ofcom will be submitting a full report to the secretary of state for culture, media and sport on the progress of the digital switchover at the end of March.
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