Over 10% of U.K. Population Has Never Used Internet

A staggering 11 percent of U.K. citizens have never used the Internet, despite its prominence in the business and consumer worlds, according to new research from the European Commission.

The figure is down from 29 percent in 2006, but still underlines the scale of the work facing organisations like Race Online 2012 to get more of the U.K. population connected.

V3, which originally published this story, contacted Race Online 2012 for comment on the figures but had received no reply at the time of publication.

The report, published by the EC’s Eurostat statistics arm, also found that 24 percent of Europeans have never used the internet, underlining the difficulties of convincing people to get online and connecting those in remote locations.

The most connected country is Sweden, where five per cent of the population have never used the internet, while Romania is the worst with 54 percent yet to experience the online world.

There was some good news in the report for the U.K., as the proportion of households online increased from 63 percent in 2006 to 85 per cent in 2011.

However, 17 percent of these homes are still using basic dial-up internet services rather than broadband connections, suggesting that superfast, always-on services have not become a “must-have” for all U.K. citizens.

Eurostat also revealed that the number of U.K. firms using mobile internet connections rose sharply in 2011 as the need for constant connectivity became paramount.

This article was originally published on V3.