Broadband News

Brits spend most time online

Monday 20 February, 2012

By Duncan Heaney

Many of us went surfing this Christmas.

We all know Brits love their broadband, but new data from comScore shines a light on just how central it has become to our lives. According to the analyst firm, people in the UK spend more time online than any other country in Europe.

comScore’s latest European internet usage statistics show that the 37.5 million people in the UK who used the internet in December 2011 spent an average of 35.6 hours each online. The closest countries to the UK in terms of time spent online were Turkey, at 33.7 hours and the Netherlands at 32.2 hours. No other European country broke the 30 hour-mark.

When it comes to online surfing though, Turkey leads the charge. Its internet users visited an average of 3,974 pages in December. British web users trail in second place with an average of 3,274 pages a month, although that’s still significantly more than much of Europe.

The country that spent the least amount of time online was Austria. The average Austrian web user spends just 15 hours a month online and visits an average of 1,628 pages. Just above that was Italy, where each user spent 17.7 hours online and viewed an average of 1,900 pages.

comScore’s general findings support those of telecoms regulator Ofcom, which found last year that Britons spend an average of 746 minutes a week online - longer than any country in the world other than the US.