E-Commerce badly in need of much higher bandwidth

Neelie Krores, the Vice President for the European Commission (EC) stated that e-commerce is in need of higher broadband bandwidth to improve online shopping.

Almost 40% of the Europeans use internet for purchases and services every year, but there are issues regarding delivery time, safety of payments etc.

Consumers are distressed that if there is any complaint of any sort, there is no one to solve it. In fact there is no one even to take the complaint

These risks prevent them from undertaking online purchase, especially if it is from another country. That is why e-commerce represents a mere 3.4% of the retail trade of the continent. According to Krores it is a huge lost opportunity.

Even if it becomes 15%, consumers stand to gain as much as GBP 165 billion. EC has brought out a 16 point action plan to increase the volume of e-commerce activity by 100% across the European Union by 2015.

Higher broadband width will be necessary for virtual services like video and music streaming, online gaming etc which can be bought online.

The authorities should make arrangement for the infrastructure, fibre optic cable installation, allocation of spectrum etc. They must also consider means to develop and use cloud services.

As per ‘Experian Hitwise’, the online competitive intelligent service, the UK consumers spent almost 13 million hours on the internet on 26th December 2011, studying the retail sites, emphasizing the popularity of e-commerce. Altogether 96.2 million visits were made to these sites on that day, which is almost 20% more than that on the same day of the previous year.