Oftel reports slowdown in UK internet traffic
The UK telecom regulator Oftel has released figures showing a sharp decline in internet traffic across UK telephone networks in the first three quarters of 2001.
In March last year 29.5 billion minutes of internet calls were accounted, compared to 32 billion in September.
This represents only an increase of 8.5%, compared to 50% over the same period one year before.
However, market watchers said that this can be explained through the already high penetration of internet connections as more than 50% of the UK households are connected to the internet.
These figures were surprising for large ISP's, such as AOL and Freeserve, which still report sharp increases in their subscriber levels and in the time customers spend online.
