14 DAY TRIAL // OK, let's start this article with Romania. According to Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, only 22 percent of the Romanians have had an Internet connection in 2007, compared with the last year when 14 percent of the population had web access. From this total number of households connected to the web, 8 percent of them have got broadband connections in 2007, while only 5 percent obtained such a high-speed connection in 2006. Romania recorded one of the lowest levels of Internet access among all the European countries, together with Bulgaria in which only 19 percent of residents accessed the web. However, 15 percent of the Bulgarians connected to the Internet have had broadband connections.
Netherlands won the first place, with an impressive 83 percentage, compared with 80 percent in 2006. The broadband connections have been in 74 percent of the households, in comparison with 'only' 66 percent in 2006. Sweden comes the second, with 79 percent of households accessing the Internet, 67 percent of them going online through broadband connections.
Now, let's see which are the most popular activities for the people going online. According to the Eurostat statistics, 23 percent of the Romanian Internet users access search engines, 21 percent of them send emails with attachments, while 12 percent prefer to chat online. The shocking number is revealed by the P2P file sharing networks, which are accessed by only 7 percent of the Romanians that are connected to the web. In addition, it would seem that Romania's residents are pretty attracted by web design, as 4 percent of them create websites.
Searching the web by using the search engine is also the most popular activity in Netherlands, where 83 percent of the people connected to the web access Google and its rivals. In addition, 44 percent of the users download and install software, while 75 percent prefer sending emails and attachments to other consumers.