Broadband continues to beat dialup when it comes to new Web access accounts, according to Internet connectivity figures for February 2003 which have just been released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS found that, while the majority of Net connections are still dialup, always-on broadband services are fast catching up. The year-on-year growth of dialup connections for February was -5.2 per cent, while the increase in permanent connections was up by 252.2 per cent for the same period. In fact figures were even better than in January, with a boost of 8.6 per cent.
In February permanent connections comprised 11.8 per cent of the total connections, up from 10.9 per cent in January. The report puts the success of always-on web access down to “a fall in the price of broadband technology and increased publicity for broadband services”.
Overall there has been a 3.7 per cent increase in connections to the Internet, which the ONS attributes to the growing popularity of broadband.