This article is more than 1 year old

Wireless Brits just want to do it in the garden

While stealing bandwidth

An AOL survey of more than 2,000 UK internet users reveals the popularity of wireless surfing: more than a third have wireless access and 84 per cent of those use it at home.

However, the vast majority of those (75 per cent) only got wireless in the last 18 months, and almost half (39 per cent) in the last six.

When it comes to choosing where and why to use wireless, the respondents demonstrated a startling lack of imagination.

Asked about their dream location to surf wirelessly, half chose their own garden, while the beach was only selected by 15 per cent, and a quarter wanted to surf from bed (to check their stock portfolio during the night, obviously). Bedroom surfing was more popular amongst the 18-to-24-year-old group who obviously have more stocks to check as 41 per cent of that age group wanted under-the-duvet connectivity.

Freedom is cited as the reason people want wireless, though the lack of cables also makes things tidier.

More than 3,000 people have accidents involving electrical leads or extensions every year, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and unless all those garden surfers have laptops with unprecedented battery lives, then the growth in wireless probably means more trailing cables rather than less.

Meanwhile, more than one in five respondents admit to stealing bandwidth from an unguarded access point, mainly in London and the South East, though 80 per cent of respondents with wireless came from those regions. Men are much more likely to have stolen connectivity than women (22 percent compared to six per cent), but both sexes feel that such thefts should be punished. ®

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like