Clearly, the World Wide Web is used in very different ways across the globe. More precise usage data would be of economic interest, especially for mobile Internet. Juniper Networks has looked into this question in more detail with its first Global Bandwidth Index. The networking equipment manufacturer wanted to know how people use mobile Internet in the workplace and at home – and what they expect from device networks in the future. At least 500 users were questioned in each of the countries Australia, Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Africa and the USA, and another 1000 or more each in Great Britain and Germany.
As expected, mobile online services are of considerably greater importance in newly industrialised countries. There, 24 percent of people regularly use Internet-enabled devices for educational purposes and 46 percent use them for continuing vocational training; in the industrial nations, the corresponding figures lie at 12 percent and 27 percent respectively. In newly industrialised countries again, those questioned use their mobile devices more frequently for everyday tasks such as banking transactions (51 percent), shopping (41 percent) and for looking up local information (42 percent). Correspondingly, 40 percent of those questioned in emerging economies said that network links have improved their earning power; 60 percent draw from this that the networks have also led to a change in their social life (industrialised countries: 17 percent and 38 percent respectively).