A little confused about our charts? Well, here they are explained. They are compiled from the Nielsen survey figures.

The ODTR used, or shall we say misused, these figures in their quarterly report. We are outraged that the ODTR ripped the least harming of these out of context with the rest and published them. So here are the rest!

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What defines "Active Internet Users" anyway? In the Nielson survey they were defined as people who had used the internet (from home) at least once in the last month.

We're not looking too bad at a first glance. But it gets worse: Ireland has stagnated at 14.8% (the ODTR might say "stabilized") while the rest of Europe (and pretty much most other reasonably well-off countries) are rising. And there's more! The internet is predominantly an English-language medium, which means it's not saying much for us to be slightly ahead of Spain and France.

So why is the World average only at 3.9%? Think of 90% of Africas population who have never held a telephone in their entire lives, think of India, China... you get the gist

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If you look at this chart it becomes clear why the ODTR didn't publish it. Instead they had this to say: "The average home user spent just under four hours online in April 2002, consistant with previous reviews"

By the way, the online time in April 2002 was 3 hours 48 minutes. In the June survey, from which our charts are compiled, that time has fallen to 3 hours 36 minutes. Not much stabilization there.

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This is the most relevant chart of all. It simply shows the average monthly online time per citizen. This is how other features of countries are compared (be it cheese consumation, television viewing time or you name it). This is also the most shocking chart; we are way behind all developed countries and only marginally above the world average. And before you try to consolidate yourself with the latter, remember that the world population consists of roughly three quarters computerless and phoneless people.