BT, the largest broadband provider in the UK released its report '21st Century Life Index' which throws light on the prevailing broadband scenario in the UK. The study conducted by the ISP shows that the internet surfing habits of the broadband consumers have been changing drastically for the last ten years both in terms of time spent by the consumers online and the websites they visit. For instance, the number of broadband customers who spend an average 5 hours per week has gone up from 25% to 58% during the last ten years.

The statistical study also shows that the number of internet users who spend 7 – 10 hours per week has moved up from 14 percent to 27 percent while nearly one-fourths of the internet users go online 11 to 30 hours and 7% of the broadband users spend more than 30 hours per week online.

Likewise, broadband users seem to browse through different websites as revealed by the BT’s report. About ten years ago, nearly half of the internet users (45 %) used to visit up to five websites per week, however, currently, 35 percent of the broadband users visit at least six websites per week while some of them are found to be browsing more than 50 websites showing 49 % increase as against the same figures in 1999.

As for the uses of internet, online shopping, music downloads and VoIP telephony have been becoming popular activities and been witnessing tremendous growth since 1999. Currently, nearly half of the UK internet users (41 %) do regular online shopping as against just two percent in 1998. Among the online shoppers, 48 percent of them use internet to buy flights or holidays while books, videos & music and clothes are other things that the online shoppers frequently buy online.

Music downloads has been other favourite activity with internet users in the UK with 30 percent of them download music tracks/albums while one-fourths of them listen to web radio stations and 14 percent of the surfers use broadband for online gaming.

As a communication tool, email is all set to gain more popularity as seven percent of the internet users preferred to use email for their communication needs while just one percent of internet users opted for email ten years ago. The report also shows that employees and workers spend an average of 4.9 times per hour to check their emails. Interestingly, significant portion of the people still believed that face-to-face communication is more effective than telephony or email.