Digital Divide Widens As Take-Up Doubles
A quarter of all households in Britain now has internet access but, of those logging on, the highest proportions are found in the south of the country and in the highest income brackets. These are the results of a new quarterly survey from the Office for National Statistics tracking internet access.
Over the first three months of 2000 an average of 6.5 million homes in the UK could access the internet through a home computer. This is the equivalent of 25% of all homes and is double the number for the same period last year. It does not include those accessing the internet by other means, including digital television.
A north-south divide mars the increase in the numbers of those joining the online revolution, however. Highest levels of access are found in London (25%), the south-east (24%) and the east of England (22%), while the north-east and Scotland both show net access at only 14%, and Northern Ireland is bottom of the pile at 11%.
Levels of access also depend very strongly on income: in all four of the lowest income groups levels of access were between 3 and 6%. From the fifth group onwards the levels increased rapidly with income, to 48% for households with the highest tenth of income.
In the above graph the level of access for the lowest income group is believed to the higher than the next two groups due to the presence of student households.
The survey finds that homes with children are more likely to be wired on to the internet: 31% of homes with one child had access, while the proportion rose to 35% in homes with two or more children. Access for these homes had more than doubled compared with 1998-99.
There is little evidence of the silver surfer phenomenon in UK homes, however. The results found that homes with retired people in them were the least likely to have net access: only 5% of retired couples and 1% of one person retired households have access.