Get Broadband and Stop Kids Watching TV

Thursday 04 October 2001 12:02:00 by Andrew Ferguson

A new set of research into the impact of broadband on consumers has been released today. Fletcher Advisory carried out a phone survey of 200 homes for BTopenworld and these are some of the results.

61% of Broadband users would rather keep their broadband connection than their TV - also the time spent watching TV is down in broadband households by an average of 5 hours a week, with it not been uncommon to combine internet and TV useage.

Number of hours spent online has risen, no great surprise really, in the sample group they used to spend 23 hours online per week this is upto 32 hours now, the average internet user is 13 hours per week. Some interesting comments were that defining hours online with broadband is difficult as people tend to use it for a minute and then do something else, i.e. the always-on nature changes habits.

Talking of patterns here is some data on what people are using the connection for

Use	Before	After
Online music	29%	74%
Banking	31%	64%
Online Shopping	40%	58%
Video	13%	53%
Games	24%	47%

An interesting point was that when they looked at the demographics they found that the pattern of broadband useage to not just be due to early adopters.

In summary Broadband users are saying that the always-on connection has changed their lives in a positive manner and not purely for internet geeks.

A snippet of BTopenworld news - apparently they now have 45,000 users