BBC: Huge Leap Forward in Tackling the Digital Divide
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006The BBC are reporting a ‘Big rise in broadband connections‘. They say:
“Almost three out of four British households have broadband connection to the internet, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show. Nearly 73% of homes used broadband in June, up from 54.4% in the same month last year and 18% in 2003.”
Great news! Except it is based on a complete inability to read statistics… in fact, the ONS data they refer to clearly states that only 57% of households have access to internet (be it broadband OR dial-up) - up from 55% in 2005.
What they actually mean to say is that 73% of households with internet connections have broadband access: around 40% of households in total.
The ONS release contains some interesting data not mentioned in the BBC story, including:
- confirmation of the continuing geographic element of the digital divide in the UK (with a clear north-south divide);
- a widening of the gap in usage between men and women (10 percentage points in this survey); and,
- new figures on usage by income (those earning £36,400+ are more than twice as likely to have used the internet in the past three months than those earning <£10,400).
