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By silicon.com, 19 January 2004 14:30

NEWS 19.01.99: Research group Datamonitor has discovered that UK consumers are paying up to three times as much for Internet access as their counterparts in Sweden.

Costs in Sweden average €4.5 a month, compared to €22 for UK Web access per month. The European residential market is worth €1.9bn a year - Germany, the Netherlands and the UK account for 74 per cent of this total.

The survey claims that competition between Internet service providers (ISPs) will force many to offer a free service - supported by advertising revenue. The report further claims that as Internet access becomes increasingly commoditised, ISPs will have to look elsewhere for revenue - such as advertising or securing a revenue split with telephone suppliers.

A spokeswoman for Fujitsu which has called for an enquiry into differential pricing in the IT arena across Europe said: "The impact of the euro means there will be a shake-out in these areas as pricing becomes more and more transparent."

She added that Fujitsu was pleased that UK retail pricing of computers and Internet access was now a recognised issue.

19.01.04: Life just isn't fair - not least of all when you're a UK web user trying to get the kind of fair deal enjoyed by your European cousins.

If it's not cost, it's availability, with the UK for a long time lagging behind other European countries in terms of rate of rollout of broadband services.

Outside Europe, the contrast is even more stark. Research released last August by the Office of National Statistics shows that while the number of UK broadband subscribers had risen by 170 per cent during the previous year, the proportion of users accessing the web via broadband still made up just 16.8 per cent of total subscriptions.

It's a sharp contrast to the picture in some Asian countries, where internet access via broadband has become the norm - accounting for about 70 per cent of internet access in South Korea, according to figures from Ovum.