I recently covered the state of the Internet report specifically how the UK did not make it anywhere on the top 100 cities and has a much slower average broadband than well pretty much anywhere. Compare it to cities such as those in Japan which has most of the top 100 cities and you see a huge technological difference.
However, in latest studies by Ofcom Britons may actually not be as technophobic as the rest of the world thinks. The average Briton spends 45% of their time using some technological stuff be that the TV, Radio, iPhone, Computer or something else along those lines. The study has revealed that we have a social networking flair with the largest site in terms of mobile Internet access being Facebook.Which is sitting at more than 5 times the traffic sent to Google from the same medium.
Going with the data we cant even attribute this to younger generations taken over from the older generations. Old age pensioners are the highest growth for Internet take up service. They claim 50% of old people now are connected to the Internet via broadband. Up from last years 43%.In contrast however the youth are best at multi-tasking such as using mobile phone, computer and watching TV whilst the older generation tends to need to focus on one goal at a time.
The figures also show that average spending on communications compared to general housing costs is around 4% or nearly £100 a month. This covers mobile phone, broadband, tv etc. With 50% of the market being covered by all in one service providers such as Sky and Virgin it is likely this has contributed significantly to the availability of services.
With information like that, one must really question is the Government responsible for slowing down the growth of technology in the UK? Our broadband infrastructure is far behind the rest of the world. Our government is using ancient browsers as recently discussed in the theme of security. Our government is perhaps reluctant to encourage technology to come to the UK as it would mean they can no longer watch our activities and tax heavily for it?
References
The Telegraph
ISPReview