ME and Ophelia

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WELSH LOVE TO SURF THE NET
Web User magazine and Virgin.net survey

We surfers in rural areas are good revenue for the ISPs and telcos. Our telco says it is too costly for them to install Broadband in some rural areas.

According to a new report the Welsh spend the most time surfing the internet. Could the reason be that large areas of Wales are rural?

Going by the figures in the report [sorry, I've mislaid the link] most of the users are spending the equivalent of two hours a day online. Fourteen hours a week. Wow - almost the equivalent of two working days on a normal shift. That's a lot of concentration, reading and attention to detail - much more than just passively sitting in front of a TV.

Web users in Swansea spend an average of 66.7 hours online each month, almost 50 per cent more time than users in London, the Virgin.net survey reveals.

Towns in the East-Midlands and North-East, where internet surfing patterns were found to be sporadic and intermittent, feature near the bottom of Virgin.net's Surfing Scales.

Scottish surfers spend 15 per cent more time online than surfers in the South-East, according to Virgin's survey - carried out with customers of its unmetered internet access service, which costs £13.49 a month.

TOP TEN UK CITIES/TOWNS
Average number of hours spent online per customer/month

1 Swansea 66.7
2 Reading 62.7
3 Guildford 62.9
4 Dundee 59.8
5 Liverpool 57.1
6 Sheffield 55.7
7 Blackpool 55.6
8 Manchester 52.9
9 High Wycombe 51.1
10 Bournemouth 51.1