Highlights:
o Internet subscriptions fell slightly for the first time in a year. They claim it is a seasonal effect.
o Dialup connections fell 1%.
o Permanent connections rose about 1%.
o Dialup connections account for 95% of all UK connections.
o Only 35% of all connections are "unmetered".
o 19% of all connections are pay-per-minute (toll calls). The rest use some combination of XX minutes included per month in basic connection plans.
o 42% of all UK households have net access.
o Only 1% of the people who have not used the internet have a poor opinion of the internet.
Conclusions:
A) With the high percentage of users still at dialup speeds, page size and speed is everything when targeting the UK. Many of those dialup users will be at 33.6 or even less.
B) Add to that the fact that many are paying per-minute access charges. It's been my experience that when surfers are "on the clock", they have a very twitchy back button finger.
C) UK'ers have a fairly high opinion of the internet. I believe the last gallup poll I saw in the US stated that over 15% of the US population had a negative opinion of the Internet.
Be sure to read that second one as there are some good ecomerces stats in there.
Nothing too surprising in it though..
"Levels of access depend very strongly on income."
etc etc
I think the two may well be very closely related...I've rarely found a slow loading site that was worth the wait...whereas a lot of the most useful sites are lightning fast
