Future of ecommerce waits for no man

Slow internet access is boosting home users' costs by 38 per cent per year and preventing them from taking full advantage of the fast-growing amount of web content.

Slow internet access is boosting home users' costs by 38 per cent per year and preventing them from taking full advantage of the fast-growing amount of web content.

These were the findings of a survey of 65 web surfers by digital connectivity specialist Hermstedt. The results indicate that those equipped with analogue modems spend three times as long waiting for web pages to download as those using ISDN. This equates to the average internet user wasting 360 hours, or 15 days per year.

Despite this, 92 per cent of the sample still used analogue modems to access the internet, with the main barrier to uptake of ISDN being the high initial cost.

"Slow home web access is stunting the growth of consumer ecommerce," says Andy Eakins, managing director of Hermstedt UK. "Research has found that one-third of net surfers will not wait eight seconds to download a website. This must be ringing alarm bells for UK ebusinesses, as over 64 per cent of internet access is done using low-end analogue modems."