back to article One in three Europeans never been online

Research from the European Commission has found that one in three Europeans have never used the internet. This is considered an improvement from 2007 when 40 per cent had never been online. 38 per cent of households said they didn't need to be online, 25 per cent blamed cost of equipment and 21 per cent blamed the cost of …

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  1. Sureo
    Thumb Up

    Geee....

    A life without spam and viruses, who can imagine it?

  2. jake Silver badge

    Online advertising.

    "The Commission also reckons that some areas such as online advertising will actually benefit from the downturn because advertisers will move online and away from traditional media."

    Someone might want to tell AOL ... Maybe it'll increase their revenue if they know ;-)

  3. Winkypop Silver badge
    Badgers

    One in three Europeans....

    .....don't bathe daily.

    So what's the big deal?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pedant Alert!

    Shouldn't that me Mb/sec (bits not bytes)?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Because for normal people the internet isn't essential

    Its only essential for people who work in IT , homeworkers and the socially stunted who substitute "friends" on Mybook or Facespace for real life friendships. For everyone else its like TV - a nice-to-have but quite easy to live without. And if you're doing long hours and working hard to earn money then you probably have better ways to spend your free time than wasting your time sitting in front of a computer.

    I work in IT but lost internet access when we moved house for a couple of weeks. Can't say it bothered me unduly. I'd have been more upset if the TV had stopped working frankly.

  6. Solomon Grundy

    This is Bad

    We want more people off the Internet! The report says that most those who have not been online were old. poor, or stupid - I suggest the exact opposite. Those who have never been online are smarter and richer (in a philosophical sense) than all the sods who waste their lives online commenting on news stories and hiding behind false identities while they spew their drivel all over the place.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Pedant

    "with average download speeds above 2 Mega Bit per second (MB/s)."

    Shouldn't that be "(0.25MB/s)"?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mega Bit / sec = MB/sec?

    Is that report sure? The last time I checked it was Mb/sec, not MB/sec.

    But then again... this is after all continental Europe where 22 Mb/sec on ADSL2+ is not unheard of.

  9. Pete 2 Silver badge

    I smell a "sloan ranger"

    "but, my dear, I simply can't live without my Range Rover - I don't know how you manage with that bicycle (and with only the one, too)".

    Really, this is the most sniffy, superior piece I've read in a long time. Calling uptake in internet usage an improvement. Would the same be said about car usage? - maybe in the unenlightened times of 50 years ago!! Hmmm. The tone is similar to what you hear about "the olden days" when people only had black and white TV, or rationing, or steamships as the only way to get from continent A to continent B.

    There are lots of people (incl. my mum) who live full and happy lives without internet access. There are just as many - probably even more, who don't have a phone line to hang their ADSL off. Are they deprived? are they unhappy with their lot? are they somehow less important, or significant because of this?

    Given that in large parts of Europe, away from urban centres, a basic, slow and intermittent ADSL connection will cost you over £300++/year, ON TOP of a phone line rental - a better question might be: do most people who actually pay the bill, get value for money from all this internet hype?

  10. windywoo

    I say leave them in peace.

    They don't have to use the internet if they don't want to, just like I don't have to watch Big Brother or endless sport on TV.

  11. Adam Buckland
    Pirate

    All those identities

    someone could be using right now...

  12. Bill Fresher

    Oh no

    So this means my comments here are only read by 66.7% of all Europeans?!

    Hardly worth the trouble.

  13. Robert Ramsay
    Joke

    Get them all off the internet...

    ...so we can have it to ourselves again.

  14. A J Stiles
    WTF?

    So?

    You're acting like it's a bad thing.

    If I was standing for election, reducing dependence on technology -- and eliminating altogether dependence on proprietary technology -- would be in my manifesto.

  15. Imagus

    What is the internet anyway?

    I'm from Europe and I have never used the internet, I wouldn't even know how to use it. What's it for anyway? Does it run on batteries? And can you post silly comments with it?

  16. Martin 6 Silver badge

    Britain got their first ....

    So the solution is obviously to tax all existing broadband to pay for running gigabit fibre to some goat herd in the Pyrenees.

    Now if you could only find a large national telecoms provider willing to undertake a task of such benefit to the community, and a politician courageous enough to give them billions of euro to do it.

  17. Drunken
    Pint

    No Surprise

    I do plenty of drinking and eating, what do these people do when they aren't eating and drinking?

    The Internet beats TV and newspaper combined.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So they already have no browser?

    That'll be one group who aren't losing sleep over the Windows 7 ballot box then...

  19. Charles Manning

    re: "But its not all bad news"

    Bloody good news!

    Do you really want these people on the internet? They're the type that plug in an unprotected Win box and leave it there to join a bot farm.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    dolce vita

    I guess that third of europe is probably reading books !?

    and using their own head to make their mind up !

    and going to see their baker or butcher every day !

    spending their evening perhaps playing cards or other social games !

    The poor bastards ... you gotta feel sorry for them ;-)

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Solomon Grundy

    Satire? On The Register? Now I've seen everything...

    Now, draw up a chair and I'll tell you young folk all about the times when we were hanging out all cool in alt.fan.warlord when the WebTV storm hit. The old, the poor and the stupid right up there in your face all day, every day, with but a brief respite while they slept...

  22. RightPaddock

    so what, who cares ?

    How much did this study cost, who authorised it, what truly useful knowledge did it produce and what's a European anyway

    Does the EC's definition include Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkey etc - I suspect not. Yet according to the Council of Europe and the OSCE those countries and many more beside lie within their bailiwick, although few non Europeans would agree with that assessment . And what about Albania, Bosnia, Serbia which most non Europeans would regard as being European, I suspect the EC has excluded them on the basis that they are non EU members, but they probably included Switzerland and Noway which are also non-EU members.

    The EU and its Commissioners are just a bunch of spendthrift purveyors of mistruths.

  23. jake Silver badge

    @AC 7:43

    "Now, draw up a chair and I'll tell you young folk all about the times when we were hanging out all cool in alt.fan.warlord when the WebTV storm hit. The old, the poor and the stupid right up there in your face all day, every day, with but a brief respite while they slept.."

    ::snort::

    Back in the net.* days, we were thinking we might be on the edge of a major revolution ... There was no sleep, someone was awake, somewhere. Then TheWELL, BIX, Delphi, and later AOL (nee. Qlink) happened.

    You alt.* folks were the beginning of the end ...

    ( Apologies to Russ, see: http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html )

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    So?

    Is that really such a bad thing?

  25. Peter Mc Aulay
    Thumb Up

    The Internet is full

    Go away.

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