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Europe Online

So, just how long will it take for the Internet to become a truly global medium? At present, the Internet is dominated by North Americans, as is apparent from the chart below.¹

Western Europe is an affluent, educated continent with a high penetration of high-tech appliances and good telecommunications infrastructure. So how come it’s so far behind the United States with regard to Internet adoption?

To be fair, there are exceptions. Northern Europe in general has many more computer and Internet users than does southern Europe. In fact, the far away Finns, famous even amongst themselves for being people of few words, boast the world’s highest per capita proportion of Internet servers and users, and ‘greater Scandinavia’ is easily the world’s best-connected region, according to a new compendium of Net-related statistics called the Internet Industry Almanac. The study found that Finland has 244.5 Net users per 1,000 people. Its northern neighbours also rated high. Norway second (231.1), Iceland third (227.3), Sweden eighth (147.3) and Denmark tenth (125.6). The United States clocked in at fourth, with 203.4 Net users per 1,000 people. The worldwide user rate is 16.9.²

Who’s Online? April 1998 World Total: 115.75 Million

In contrast to the Scandinavians, not even 1 per cent of the loquacious Italians use the Internet, according to Marco Lombardi, planning director at Y&R Italia Milan. Italian marketing consultant Giancarlo Livraghi (http://gandalf.it/netmark/) blames this poor showing on technophobia and fears about the dangers of the Internet: ‘Families (as well as politicians and teachers) are bombarded every day with sensationalism and misinformation that makes them uncomfortable and scares them away.’

Climate and social customs probably play a part, too. Long, dark, hard winters force northern Europeans to spend many months of the year indoors – ideal for developing computer skills and networking with other people online. As Katerina Varenius of Hall & Cederquist/Y&R Stockholm puts it: ‘The trend is that we will see less of these people out in the garden, since they will be sitting in front of the computer. The computer is a fully legitimate place to be – you don’t have to explain to anybody whether you do something useful or not.’ By the same token, the long, fine summers of southern Europe just invite pavement café and beach life – why shut yourself away with a computer and modem when you can go out and socialize in the sun?

Language is cited as an obstacle to non-English-speakers using the Internet – the vast majority of websites are American and many non-US sites have English-language versions. Yet the Internet hasn’t yet caught on big time in the UK, which obviously has no language problem. Some analysts speculate that the British predisposition for ‘tradition’ has in some ways hampered their embrace of this new medium. It will be interesting to see whether Richard Branson’s Internet venture, Virgin Net, will succeed in galvanizing Britain into becoming more of a force in cyberspace. Judging from the success of past Branson ventures, such a scenario is likely.

In some respects, France was ahead of the European pack with France Telecom’s Minitel system, a screen-based dial-up information and communication system launched in 1984. The equipment was provided free on demand and as many as 6.5 million subscribers used it. Yet some industry analysts think that having Minitel may have inclined many French people to dismiss the Internet as unnecessary for their needs. Minitel is certainly well entrenched. France’s major national daily papers Le Monde and Le Figaro are on the Web and even offer search facilities, but their archives cannot be accessed through the Internet; it’s Minitel only.

Nevertheless, in early February 1998, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin became the first French leader ever to appear on a podium with a technology guru when he welcomed Microsoft founder William H. Gates III at a technology conference. Jospin’s government has vowed to embrace the Internet, even if its lingua franca is English.

Part of Europe’s problem is that computer penetration is a lot lower in Europe than in the United States and it’s growing at a less rapid pace in Europe than in North America and Asia. Sweden has developed an innovative socialist – capitalist approach to address this situation: Lands Organisationen (LO), the country’s largest labour union, has negotiated a special bulk lease-purchase deal for its members, resulting in a huge increase in business for PC makers. Just four months after it was struck in 1997, the LO deal with PC manufacturer Hewlett-Packard accounted for more than 30 per cent of all home PCs sold in Sweden that year. Also, Swedish tax breaks are making it easier for employers to supply their workers with cheap PCs. Expect more deals of these types to drive higher computer sales in other countries over the coming years.³

But even for computer owners with Internet access, relatively high telephone charges discourage the sort of long online sessions that enable users to develop Internet interest and skills. The deregulation of European telecoms markets that took place in January of 1998 is likely to increase competition and drive down prices. But the case of British Telecom in Britain shows that entrenched monopolies aren’t dislodged overnight – it takes quite a while for serious competition to be established.

Y&R feedback about the Internet from around Europe is pretty consistent, along the lines of ‘there’s lots of hype, it hasn’t had much impact here yet, but people are very interested and expect it to change the way they do business’.

The most concrete expectations come from Katarina Varenius: ‘The change to expect, I would think, would be the closure of retailer branches of all sorts, due to the shift from visiting a physical location to visiting it on the Internet. Post offices, banks and food stores will close down their ‘bread and butter’ stores, and focus their competence and one-on-one service on flagship stores … The number of smaller businesses has increased. The high unemployment level has caused a need for job creation, and one way is to start your own business. The Internet has made it much easier to succeed, due to the low costs involved in presenting your idea and your business to the market.’

Sus Røedgaard at Y&R Copenhagen reports similarly upbeat thinking about the Internet: ‘Internet is not only for technology freaks anymore. A lot of Danish institutions and cultural organizations are on the Net. The Ministry of Culture in Denmark has sponsored a site called “Kulturnet Danmark” (http://www.kulturnet.dk/) that has links to all cultural institutions on the Net. Kulturnet also helps cultural organizations to get on the Net by helping them program their homepage. Even the Royal Danish Theatre is online, and so is the Danish Royal Family.’

There’s little risk in predicting that Western Europe is not going to take the world lead in cyberspace in the foreseeable future. The old continent has its share of digerati, but Europe looks a long way from reaching the critical mass of popular usage that will encourage and sustain a real range of local Internet initiatives. The United States will lead the race well into the next millennium.

Within Europe, it’s hard to imagine the southern countries doing anything other than playing catch-up – at best – for years to come. For European leads on the Internet, it’s worth watching the Nordic countries. They’ve been tinkering with the Internet for some time now, and the Swedes in particular have proved that they can put together marketing concepts that cross borders easily – Abba, Ikea and two distinctive car marques (Volvo and Saab).

Watch out for the Netherlands, too – the Dutch are rapidly adding to their Internet server count, which per capita in Europe only lags behind the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland. Given their great talent for languages, the Dutch have no problem jumping into the Internet mainstream and holding their own. And with astute trading bred in the bone, the Internet is just the thing to stimulate Dutch commercial use, with everyone from Royal Dutch Airlines to porn merchants offering their services.

Asia Online

For most Asians, the Internet is more of a future promise than a present reality. Cybercafés are springing up all over the region, making the Internet more accessible, but usage is generally limited by the low level of computer ownership overall and tight government restrictions in China and Vietnam.

Asian governments are pretty bullish about the Internet. Even Vietnam, with one of the most censorious and information-restrictive governments in the region, celebrated an official ‘Vietnam Internet Day’ in November 1997. The occasion marked the awarding of licences for four Internet service providers (ISP). Signing up costs around US$36, with US$4 per month access charges – not for everyone in a country in which the average annual wage is US$300.

Surprisingly, the most technologically advanced country in the region, Japan, has proved to be pretty slow in making use of the Internet. MIT Media Lab chief Nicholas Negroponte has posited that the adoption of personal computers, and hence email, by the Japanese was held up by the invention of the fax, which permitted handwritten telecommunication. Using the QWERTY keypad to input Japanese characters is certainly less convenient.

On the other hand, Chinese characters are equally difficult to input, yet Taiwan has 1.26 million Internet users, according to last year’s survey by Internet Information and Intelligence. And that number is expected to climb to 3 million by the year 2000. The popularity of the Internet has boosted consumer acceptance and usage of Web shopping sites. Taiwanese consumers can even report tax by Internet.