Europeans are increasingly eager for new technologies and open to the opportunities offered by new tools & services but worry over their costs, according to the latest EU-wide survey.
In order to address these worries, Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda stated: "Ensuring consumers' expectations can be met at an affordable price is one of the aims of the Connected Continent package, which will be presented by the Commission in September."
More specific, according to the survey, almost everyone in Europe uses mobile phones but only half of them are the so called ‘smart-phones’. Phones that include internet access range from 55% in Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Finland, France & the Netherlands to below 35% in Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria & Portugal. This is often due to the charges since 58% of Internet access subscribers in Portugal, 53% in Greece, 52% in Cyprus and 47% in Belgium tend to limit the time they spend online due to high costs.
Moreover, more than half of EU citizens limit calls from their mobile to national (55%) and international numbers (54%) due to high charges and more than 70% limit their national calls in Greece (81%), Portugal (79%), Ireland (72%) and Romania (71%).
As far as broadband access at home is concerned, 3/4 or 72.5% of households now have a broadband connection, up from 67.3% in 2011. A significant increase was observed in Romania and Slovakia where the number leapt by 20% and by 16.7% respectively.
In addition, the division between phone & Internet is fading: 34% use the internet to make voice calls (Voice over Internet Protocol or "VOIP"), up 7% in 2012. 28% uses the internet to talk to users on the same VOIP network for free, and 4% use VOIP to make cheaper international calls. Web-based calls are extremely popular in Bulgaria (57%), Cyprus (55%), Estonia (54%), Lithuania & Latvia (51%). However, VOIP is less used in Portugal (18%), Italy, (26%), Spain (28%) & Greece (29%), but becoming more popular, with use growing by an average of 7% since 2011. Finally, the increase in VOIP use seems to be related to the growth in broadband.
 |
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.neurope.eu |