Japan is the Most Wired Country
Posted on March 30, 2006
The AP reports that Japan is the most wired country -- not South Korea as many people thought. A study found that 89% of Japan residents use the Internet. This number far surpassed other countries in the survey.
When pollsters for Ipsos Insight recently asked 6,500 people in 12 countries whether they had used the Internet in the past month, 68 percent of South Koreans said yes. That ranked No. 4, behind Japan (89 percent), Canada (72 percent) and the United States (71 percent).At 89% Japan's entire society has pretty much made a complete lifestyle change to the Internet. 71% for the U.S. seems awfully high considering a large swath of the U.S. population does not even have web access.(For those who track Asia's fastest-rising economies, China had a rate of 50 percent, while India showed just 15 percent � though Ipsos researchers only queried people in urban areas in those countries.)
South Korea also didn't own the top slot in time spent online. The survey found that Korean Internet users, on average, were online for 12.7 hours each week, behind those in China (17.9 hours a week) and Japan (13.9). Canadian Web surfers clocked 12.3 hours each week and Americans were fifth at 11.4, followed by Mexicans at 9.2.
