Broadband accounts for 90 percent internet connections in UK
The recent broadband survey conducted by Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that there are 18.31 million UK homes having access to internet in 2009, while 16.5 million UK households have their own broadband connection.
The number of UK households that go online have increased by 1.85 million during the last year. Home broadband connections grew at 17 % from 14.14 million in 2008 to 16.5 million in 2009, the study revealed.
Most of the internet users (94 %) used to go online at home while the users of public wi-fi hotspots increased to 2.5 million in 2009 from just 700,000 a couple of years ago. This was due to the stupendous growth in wi-fi hotsptos UK. Broadband providers like BT have set up hundreds of wi-fi hotspots in major cities in UK.
Around 90 % of the internet connectivity in was offered by broadband, an increase from 69 % from 2006. The number of UK adults who accessed internet in 2009 were 37.4 million, while 96% of the internet users belonged to the 16-24 years age group. Majority of the internet users (73%) accessed internet daily. The younger people were more regular than older age group in terms of internet activities and online habits.
Most of the broadband internet usage was related to emails (90%) while more than two-thirds used broadband internet to access social networking sites featureing blogs, chat and news group. About 64% of the UK broadband users went onine shopping while many people were also found using internet for VoIP call making, online music, videos etc.