This article was originally published in Liberal Democrat News on June 11th, 1999 and led to the creation of Lib Dems Online – which was highly influential in sorting out the party’s online presence. You can see a more recent version of my views on this on Slideshare.
According to a UK survey conducted by NOP last December, 23% of the adult population (10.6 million voters) used the internet in 1998 – and the internet was getting 10,900 new adult users every day – a million new voters going online every 90 days.
Since that survey in December, growth in internet usage has accelerated. PC prices have continued to fall and there has been an explosion in the number of free internet providers such as Dixon’s FreeServe, Tesco.net and BT’s ClickFree service. For anyone with a computer and modem, the cost of getting on the internet is only the cost of a local phone call. Once online, it is easy to get a free email account and free web-space.
The internet has taken off faster than radio, TV, telephones and videos did when they were introduced – and is continuing to grow faster than they did at an equivalent stage of their development. We should not be surprised if the majority of UK homes are connected to the internet in some way or another within 5 years.