Nearly 30% of UK households don’t have internet access
An Office of National Statistics report has claimed that nearly 30% of homes in the UK don’t have access to the internet.
Scotland reported the lowest internet penetration with just 62%. London had an 80% penetration rate. Nearly 37% of houses in the UK can’t access the internet via broadband because the location is too far away from the nearest telephone exchange.
The report also showed that 95% of people with a degree had internet access, while only 52% of those who didn’t have any qualifications had access to the internet.
The study also revealed that the number of elder web users using the internet daily has slightly fallen from 54% in 2008 to 52% in 2009. 21% of the population have never used the internet, which is a reduction from 25% in 2008. People over 65 are least likely to have used the internet with 64% claiming never to have used the internet, which is down from last year’s 70%.
An Ofcom research said that 42% of people who didn’t have access to internet said that they didn’t want to access it. 61% of people without internet had never used a computer before.
The Digital Britain report, compiled by the Government, had pledged 2 Mbps internet connections to be available throughout the country by 2012. However, bringing internet to the rural areas has been known to be a challenge.
Among the people using the internet, the survey showed that 40% of people had uploaded videos and pictures to YouTube or Facebook in the last year, up by 16% when compared to last year.
The ONS discovered that 73% of adults used the internet every day, the age – group accessing it the most being 16 to 24, where 86% of this age group use the internet daily.
90% of users use the internet to access their e-mail while 21% of respondents said that they made voice or video calls on internet services.
Source - Telegraph
