French does not want Internet

New survey shows that french are not getting connected

[henki]

A report about french internet usage shows that:
One in 12 online from home in October 1999
One in five online from home in April 2001
6% to go online in a year
More than half have no plans to go online at all.

"The French are not as technologically advanced compared to, say, Scandinavians"
Olivier Beauvillain, Jupiter MMXI analyst

Not very encuraging numbers, but remember that there are some 15 million net users in France.

[news.bbc.co.uk...]

[rencke]

Very interesting. France lagging behind the rest of western Europe has been very evident for the last couple of years. But I am not sure about the conclusion drawn by Jupiter/MMXI as quoted above. Remember that France had Videotex installed in almost all homes 25 years ago - called Minitel locally. It never became really popular anywhere else in Europe, but it seems to vindicate the conclusion about French not being technologically advanced. They were 25 years ago and why would they have lost that capability?

From the article: "One pointer to the future could be the old Minitel system, which combines a basic online text service with the telephone."

I suspect it is not only a pointer to the future, but also a clue as to the present. Perhaps no one has explained to the French what Internet will give them in addition to Minitel.

[henki]

I think we are looking at the key issue of the delayed internet revolution. People are not getting connected. The vast majority would never buy a computer to get internet connection. They need TV boxes, or another simplified platform.

Unfortunately new tech items like the tv boxes must go through the "early adaptors" in order to reach the mass. But the potential early adaptors allready have PCs to connect with and see no value in the tv boxes.

In Sweden, the government gave companies tax breaks if they supplied their employees with home PCs. The result was that all employees where offered a great discount (up to 50%) for home PCs, if bought through the job or union. That is the reason we have a high (76%) home connection rate. Good move, but I believe many of the home PCs are collecting dust. The internet would be better off with an easier platform, like the tv boxes.

Also with the PC as the only platform, we will have a greater gap in society with the connected people and the non connected ones.

[Bentler]

From what I gather, France has strong grassroots resistance to outside cultural influences, and may widely regard the Internet as another diluting force, maybe because so many sites are in English, and maybe because in general it represents the globalization of culture generally. Just my impression from what I've read over the past several years: the French don't want globalization, they like France the way it is already.

[Macguru]

The Minitel must be some factor, in France. But some cultural factor must also weight in the balance. French Canadians (in Québec) also lag behind 10% the rest of Canada for going online. The income is comparable between the two, we have a very advantageous program for low income families (40% of hardware and 80% of connexion cost are subsidised).

For some reason, "French does not want Internet".

<added> Bentler beat me on this one</added>

[Eric_Jarvis]

as somebody who spends a lot of time looking around sites in various languages and countries...I'd say the French seem to be OK at the web when they can be bothered to make the effort...the cultures that really haven't got to grips with it are Italian, Portuguese and especially Spanish

the vast majority of sites in those languages seem to exist as a self contained set of pages that neither link out nor in and contain no way of contacting the owner/publisher

[heini]

New Nielsen figures [epm.netratings.com] actually paint a dfferent picture, with the french being Europe´s third most active surfers.