Europe Net Users Now Outnumber US/Canada

palefish writes "From this article in the Media Guardian: According to Irish-based industry monitor Nua.com, Europe has almost 186 million users, while Canada and the US register 182 million. The difference may not seem substantial, but Europe is still a growing market. I've always thought of Europe as lagging somewhat behind the States in the internet uptake stakes (probably because some of our telecoms companies are yet to understand the internet). So, I don't know about you lot, but this statistic came as a bit of a surprise to me."

ummm...a little fishy

[fjordboy]

Ok, this coming from a european based company?
According to Irish-based industry monitor Nua.com,
That's like me saying that I did a study that shows that I'm the best.

So we can't trust this poll either?

[forged]

Perhaps this poll [slashdot.org] wasn't representative either, then.

Well it's not the UK

[DrSkwid]

(probably because some of our telecoms companies are yet to understand the internet)

Ours tried to claim patent on Hyperlinks

In other news [theregister.co.uk] :
"Take-up of broadband in the UK lags pitifully behind other countries in Europe, according to the latest stats from Nielsen/NetRatings."

UK Govt. sold off the monopoly telecoms company. We could have had fibre to the door from the profits but instead licences were sold to foreign investment. They have spectacularly failed to recoup their investment, not least because BT won;t open up the local loop. I have fibre to my street but copper to the door.

OK hindsight is easy but selling the country's comms to finance slashing income tax wasn't really in the best long term interests of that market.

It is correct that there was a lot of overcapacity of the workforce in the nationalised industries but why it takes private investment to sort it out is a mystery. Reducing expenditure and increasing profits isn't the only way to operate. Providing jobs with lower work rates is good for the emloyees.

The promise of technology bringing more leisure time has come true. The unforseen consquence of that was that the time would not be evenly distributed. We now have millions of people without work and millions of people with too much work to do. Crazy.

Major improvements in UK telcos internet offerings

[wfmcwalter]

I've recently returned to the UK after spending several years in Silicon Valley. When I left, dialup was metered and broadband unheard of. On returning, I've been pleasantly surprised by the offerings the UK telcos now have for internet access. Unmetered access is common, and at a price & quality equal to that I enjoyed in the US. Options (and prices) for broadband are considerably better than I enjoyed in Silicon Valley. I think the UK telcos (especially BT) finally get the internet.

<grumble>Okay, I lived 1/4 mile from El Camino in Mountain View, and stupid PacBell said I couldn't get DSL (toooo faaaar). If you can't rely on broadband in the densest area of the world's technology capital - where can you?</grumble>

Re:Don't believe everything you read...

[Rob.Mathers]

While your webstats might be originating mostly from the US, that is hardly representative of the population of the web. Perhaps your site doesn't have anything of interest to Europeans.
Think about your web activity, I suspect that you mostly visit US- or North America-centric sites. Wouldn't the logical conclusion therefore be that most Europeans mostly visit European-centric sites?

Re:Don't believe everything you read...

[Draoi]

There may be a significant difference between 'users on-line' and the amount of surfing individuals. Thanks to our punitive [irelandoffline.com] telco [eircomtribunal.com] here in Ireland, I'm severly limited as to my on-line time as our dialup charges are metered per-minute. *And* we've yet to get decent broadband! There may be more users on-line per-capita (I doubt that, too) but they're not on-line as long & thus not hitting as many URLs. Long-winded, but do you see my point?

Re:Don't believe everything you read...

[colinleroy]

I know my webstats still show majority from US
How do you know ? whois on the IPs ? .com, .net and .org aren't necessarily US sites. It depends on your website's language, too - one of mine's in French, 34% of the visits come from .fr domain names. On my english site, only 9% come from .fr.

Re:More 'Net users in Europe than North America

[MxTxL]

While it's true that you can't make projections about someone else's figures without knowing anything about how the data was collected, i'm halfway willing to call all the numbers pretty bogus unless they came up with a pretty brilliant way to collect the data.

There are scores of people that only have internet access at work and are really 'net users but probably not counted. NAT and wireless are technologies that call the numbers into doubt and also, there is no real way to count users on all the various home or home office setup LANS. Also, there are millions of college students that don't have net access in their dorms (or off campus residences) but have access through college computer labs. The same applies to high school students. Factor in internet cafes, kinkos and the like and you can begin to see that it would be quite difficult to gauge an 'actual' number of internet users.

the hidden net users

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a North American living in Europe (France) here they are literally retarded when it come to internet penetration (I manage a team of french Web Developers and a majority of them do not even have internet at home!!!) however when I was in Italy visiting some friends in the Italian farmland I was suprised to see that every familly I visited had a PC and an internet setup.

Go figure...

Re:USA is NOT the World

[Anonymous Coward]

The remarkable thing is that all you 'Yanks' are so defensive. Is it perhaps that only a small percentage of your country has the brains to read and write never mind get online..

UK % connections is runninng at 55% and we lag way behind Finland and Norway.

We also have a greater percentage of PhD's, Degrees, millionaires, Nobel prizes, etc.

Lets face it Iraq will probably be catching up with the US next (theirs got to be a reason you want to go to war with them).

Anyone taken a poll of Mexico?

[anzha]

How funny that poll is. If you're going to compare continent to continent, why are the Euros leaving out Mexico and the rest of Latin America. After all, if they're north of Columbia, they're in north america. I've also been told that, once you get past the border region, much of Mexico really is well developed.

I have certainly come across plenty of latin americans in the years I've been online...

Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I am surprised that it is not until now that Europe passes the states.
Until I moved here several years ago I too believed USA to be a leader in many ways but sadly the are behind on almost any IT.

ASIA?

[nickmcghie]

I don't have any hard numbers, but I'm confident there are a lot more net users in Asia. Living in Taiwan for the past many years, I've noticed that there is a FAR higher percentage of broadbrand users than in the US or Europe. Competition here is healthy with ADSL and cable modem services available for as low as $20/month. The Taipei City government even provides FREE dial-up access, so those with broadbrand can still get internet access. When returning to the US this past summer, I was very surprised how many of my friends rarely use the internet and how even fewer people have broadband.

The US is WAY behind when it comes to anything hi-tech. Here in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, etc., we get all the latest and greatest gadgets well before the US. In fact, many of the coolest cell phones, MP3 players, CD players, and other electronic gadgets never even appear in the US.

Its really quite pathetic how behind the US is technologically (especially the consumers and general population). As I'm moving back to the US, I hope that they can quickly play catch-up to Asia!

Re:The US is not ahead in technology

[Anonymous Coward]

The US has a long history of being on the receiving end of Brain Drain. That is a major, if not primary, reason for the successes and prosperity of the country, not to mention all the useful technological advances.

Send us your tired, your poor, your hungry and your motivated and your smart. We like 'em.