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

Re:Major improvements in UK telcos internet offeri

[FigWig]

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?

Yeah, but you should have been able to get AT&T cable broadband there, at least I could when i lived in Sunnyvale near El Camino. And it's much better than DSL, I never experienced any slowdown due to over subscription.

Re:Germany

[shiva600]

Erm .. sorry ?
You have been to germany exactly what summer ?
Actually, internet access and especially broadband is not expensive at all imho.
For example I'm posting from my 768/128-DSL-Line, which costs me ca. 50/month, *inclunding* flat rate, which means I can be online as long as I'd like to and do not have a download cap.
It would be even cheaper (for me) if I wouldn't be too lazy to change access providers every now and then.
Now on to your cellular-phone-thingy.
This story is so strange it made me laugh. Yes, everybody and his dog usually has a cellular phone, and I like it that way, but downloading music ? lol ? "Burning" to minidisc ? Come on.
You've been to Amsterdam and smoked one, right ? ;)

HA!

[budalite]

That probably just means that the European Polltakers are more efficient that ours. I think there are a lot more Internet users in the US than most people realize. For example, until recently, I refused to buy anything over the Internet because of the security problems. I was very adamant. Then I found out that my wife had been doing it anyway, for years. Then, again, if anyone gets hold of my bank and credit card accounts, they'll be in for a rude surprise. They've already been drained. (I have children.) Maybe that's the best security measure of all -- always be BROKE! Works for me.

Dumb Europeans

[SerpentMage]

I watch this talk show called TvTotal, which is hosted by a guy called Stephan Rabb. Since in Germany there is an election he did a series on "First voter check". Basically in the first voter check he tested the "intelligence" or lack of the first voters. Folks, ignorance is not specific to Americans. Some people were REALLY DUMB! For example they asked the people to place where countries were in Europe, with the boundaries drawn in. And hardly anybody got it right. They kept putting the capital of Germany, Berlin near Paris.

So I think we Europeans and we North American's should come to the conclusion that idiots exist everywhere and nobody has an exclusive contract on them!