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."

Comments

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 telco 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?