South-west and London 'most-connected' in Britain

London and the south-west of England boast the biggest rates of internet connection take-up in the country, according to official statistics.

Some 69 per cent of households in both the capital and the south-west were found to have a connection to the web in new figures from the Office of National Statistics.

They were closely followed by the east of England on 67 per cent of households connected to the internet, the south-east with 65 per cent and Scotland with 60 per cent.

However, high-speed broadband lines required for bandwidth-hungry services such as VoIP or videoconferencing were found to be most prevalent in London.

Despite such strong uptake of services in many areas, these new figures were not mirrored throughout the nation as Northern Ireland, the north-east and Yorks & Humber had far fewer net-connected households, with only 52 per cent currently online.

Explaining why they had yet to set up an internet connection, just over half the respondents who were still lacking a link to the web said they did not have any extra time to spend surfing the web or setting up the connection, while a fifth claimed not to have the basic computer skills to get it to work.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/123414/south-west-becomes-uks-most-wired-region.html