Internet and Intranet - the delivery channel of the future

The 9th Annual Forum on technology for retail banking. London, 28th and 29th October 1996

COPYRIGHT All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in any retrieval system of any nature without the prior written permission of Andrew Marshall.
This material is trade secret and its confidentiality is strictly maintained. Use of any copyright notice does not imply unrestricted public access to this material.
Copyright © 1996 Andrew Marshall

(This is the distributed text of a paper presented at the 9th Annual Forum on Technology for Retail Banking at the Dorchester Hotel in London on the 29th October 1996 by Andrew Marshall, published in HTML format. This document is designed for Netscape browsers and may not display correctly in other formats.)

 

Introduction

This is not a paper that reflects the normal presentation of technical hyperbole surrounding the Internet, liberally sprinkled with browser debates and arcane enthusiasm about TCP/IP sockets. This kind of discussion, while interesting to certain parties, does not address the real challenges facing Financial Institutions today and in the future, and how they will affect the management, marketing and products of Financial Institutions as well as the technical areas.

Normally when a paper is given at a seminar, the intent is to leave the audience with a message. This topic and this presentation is different because the intent is to leave the audience with either or both of two messages - excitement and worry.

This paper will cover the following areas: Firstly some background on what the Internet is, where it is going, and what Financial Institutions are doing today. Next, some detail on threats and opportunities for Financial Institutions that are direct results of the Internet. Third, some practical implications that the technology has for Institutions internally, some considerations on using Intranet technology, and finally, some predictions for the future.

It should be noted that this text is not a word-for-word transcription of the presentation that will be given. Further, the topic is so large and varied that it cannot possibly be covered exhaustively in a short presentation or in this paper. The audience is invited to contact me directly (contact details provided at the end of this paper) should further discussion be required.

Finally, it should be noted that this paper covers the Retail Banking aspects of the Financial Services industry. Other aspects are similarly affected.

Background - the Internet

A lot of you will know this section already, and it won't tell you anything new - so please feel free to skip it.

Subject to as much hype as anything I have ever encountered, the Internet and some related terms such as "Information Superhighway" are discussed in almost every forum imaginable - from the Sunday newspapers to television documentaries, from Business Week to MTV. You would have to have been living on another planet for the last two or three years to have missed it, so I will limit the background to an attempt to provide a concise summary of the Internet itself.

The Internet is a network. The major difference between the Internet and previous networks is that it is not owned or operated by anyone. In this sense it is an 'open' network. Although governed by certain technologies and naming standards, it is not owned or controlled by any vendor or proprietary technology, and it is in the truest sense of the word an anarchistic network.

Simplistically, participants in the Internet can be servers or clients. The Internet uses a single protocol to connect all its participants together. This protocol is TCP/IP.

A variety of 'standard' applications are used across the Internet. These are such applications as Email, File Transfer (FTP), and the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web, called the WWW or simply "the web" for short, receives most popular attention as it provides a common, easy to use graphical user interface for accessing information on various servers including but not limited to text, graphics, audio and video.

The Internet is huge . It has millions of clients, hundreds of thousands of servers (ranging from supercomputers to PC's) and is international in scope. It is growing exponentially on an annual basis.

It is simple to connect to the Internet - a PC, a modem, and some free or low cost applications, and a cheap subscription to an Internet Service Provider is all that is required. For a few dollars a month and a local phone call, you can be using the Internet.

Some confusion arises when different elements or applications that compose or surround the Internet are referred to as the Internet. The most common practice here is to refer to the World Wide Web as the Internet, however it is just one application. The Internet itself is a neutral network, i.e. it provides a common ground for transportation, regardless of the application at either end. This neutral network has facilitated the use of many applications (such as the Web, and Email) but its very neutrality will provide a platform for more advanced applications that require global neutral networking in the future.

Background - Intranet

Intranet is quite simply the use of Internet standards and technologies in a closed environment, i.e. not connected to the Internet or the outside world. Commonly, this would be a corporate Local Area Network, with a World Wide Web server and client PC's running WWW browser software. Thus employees in the company may access information on the server using a standard, familiar and simple browser interface.

Many companies are now investigating and deploying this cost effective and simple method of sharing information and web-based applications, using the same enabling principle of neutrality inherent in the Internet.

Ninety percent of US corporations are now evaluating Intranet solutions. At the beginning of 1996, nearly 25% of the Fortune 1000 companies already used an Internal Web server . Industry analysts expect Intranet software sales to reach US$ 1.2 billion in 1997.

So what has all this got to do with me?

One of the questions that I most frequently have to answer goes something like this: "This Internet stuff is all really interesting, but what does it really have to do with my business?"

The bottom line is that the Internet will, in the near future, radically alter the Banking and Finance industry. This will have a much larger business impact than ATMs , telephone banking and so on as it will change the fundamental methods of doing business.

Why? Because for the first time ever, the capability exists for anyone, anywhere in the world to access a computer system run by anyone, anywhere in the world at a reasonable cost, with reasonable performance, and in a standard manner.

Up until now, many banks that I speak to are treating the Internet (specifically Web presence) as just another element in the evolution of the delivery channel that typically goes Branch-ATM-TelephoneBank-HomeBanking-Internet. While it is a logical assumption, and to a certain extent true, it ignores the implications of the statement highlighted above - by assuming that the Internet delivery channel is an adjunct to existing banking relationships and traditional delivery methods.

Some of the reactions that I see from various institutions are a mix of the following statements:

"We know we have to play, but it's not big enough yet to be a serious issue"

"There aren't enough people using it yet. We'll wait and see"

"It's only used by techies"

"It isn't secure enough yet. Maybe when it is……"

"We tried PC based home banking and it had limited success. This will be the same."

Others are setting up Web sites, and some are implementing Internet delivered transactions, but still treating it as just another delivery channel. According to a recent Ernst & Young survey, 84% of Banks plan to offer PC based services, and 61% are piloting or planning Internet services.

It is another delivery channel, but that's not all.

Remember that

a) Internet is growing exponentially

b) Most of the usage growth is in the most profitable customer segments

To illustrate, here are some (mainly US, they have better data) predictions and statistics :

  • US Home banking will undergo 75% p.a. growth between now and the year 2000 (source: Forrester research)
  • 70% (US figures) of Corporate executives say they will use the Internet for business transactions by 1997 (source: Forrester Research).
  • There are 2 million new Internet users each month, 60% from the business world. (source: Forrester research).
  • Internet will be the most important delivery channel within the next ten years (source: Booz Allen)

The growth of Internet and usage of the Internet has been well documented. This growth shows no sign of slowing, and various developments such as the infamous "network computer" for turnkey Internet access, and the forthcoming delivery of Internet to the home via cable television and satellite broadcasting will provide additional impetus. BSkyB is now planning on providing Internet access via a set-top unit with its new digital satellite system, Hughes in the US is providing high bandwidth home satellite access (DirectPC) for Internet provision … and the list goes on.

So why will this fundamentally change my business?

The threats to the status quo are as follows:

1. It is possible, today, to build a whole Bank based on Internet access. The main threat from this is that non-Bank competition will start to become an issue. Non-Banks will be in a position to take the cream of the business, and leave the traditional Banks and transaction processors with lower margins. Many non-Banks are providing financial services and content today - software manufacturers, telecommunications providers, and information providers among them.

2. Use of Internet is a great leveller. For a relatively small investment, a small institution may build a very impressive Internet presence, offering excellent facilities. With a low overhead, no legacy branch network and much greater mobility, there will be little visible difference between large and small institutions. As provision of function using the Internet requires no investment in the delivery channel, and is largely a software-only investment, the entry cost to the Financial Services marketplace is much lower than before.

3. The ease of Internet access offers much greater mobility. Customers can and will compare credit card rates, fees, lending rates and so on with immense ease, putting greater pressures on interest margins.

4. With no international borders (and not forgetting issues like EMU ), it will be much easier for banks to participate outside their traditional geographical boundaries. One morning you could wake up and find you have four hundred competitors instead of fourteen. Already, some US resident discount financial service companies are planning (and announcing) to extend services via Internet to global customers.

So what do we do?

The main point of the preceding sections was to demonstrate clearly that Internet can and will fundamentally change the Banking business, and that most of what Banks are currently doing, while worthwhile, is not addressing this.

The incumbent Banks have several key strengths today. Provided they move quickly enough, these opportunities can be maximised.

Some of these strengths are:

  • Banks currently own customer relationships, and can make the most of inertia of customer mobility provided they can provide equivalent services.
  • Banks have trust and a track record and a visible presence.
  • Banks possess functional Call centres, ATM and Branch networks that will be valuable in the transition period.
  • Banks have access to Bank-only facilities such as SWIFT.

The strategy……

Firstly, you have to develop an Internet presence, and start building internal skills and infrastructure to support subsequent stages. Many Institutions are doing this already. This is a relatively low-cost exercise. (The cost of setting up a fully functional Internet banking site is 1 - 2 million US$, approximately the same as the cost of one traditional branch). Email and Web server capability is enough to start with (take into account critical factors such as bandwidth available and firewall/security issues).

Decide on the structure of the organisation that will support Internet Banking activity - integral with the existing institution, a different branch, a different Bank? (One cannot help but to draw parallels with First Direct here). There are arguments both for and against, the details of which are outside the limited scope of this paper - however, consider the market profile of First Direct against the market profile of Call Centre initiatives within existing Bank organisations.

Publicise Email contacts to customers - letting existing customers who have Email capability know how to contact you using this medium.

Establish a Web presence, and publicise it with all the major and minor search engines. Make sure that any Internet user using a search engine and entering keywords such as "Bank" or your institution's name find your Web site. It is extremely important not to underestimate the importance of dedicating resource to establishing 'web publicity'. New mechanisms for this are appearing literally daily, and it takes a considerable amount of effort to keep up.

The content of the Web site is outside the scope of this discussion, however, carefully profile the customers you have that will use this media, and keep monitoring it. Typically today it will be business users, and the more sophisticated personal customers. Tailor the services to meet these segments. Provision of actual transactions requires careful planning and the security implications are fraught with problems, as with any online service, such as the method to be used to positively identify the customer with enough confidence to execute a financial transaction. However, these problems are not insurmountable, and among the many methods available today there are some that are workable without excessive complication of the user interface.

Banks today are offering on the Internet:

  • Transaction enquiries
  • Credit card applications
  • Statement enquiries
  • Bill payment
  • Services directories
  • Personal finance package interfaces (to Intuit etc.)

… and the list is growing daily. One aspect that requires consideration is whether interfaces to popular financial managers (Quicken, Microsoft Money) should be provided, or Web only content.

Consider becoming an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to your customer base, where local regulations allow. You can provide customers with Internet access at beneficial rates - on the basis that if they use the channel for transactions, your delivery cost is lower, and the customer pays the network fees.

Consider co-operative marketing agreements with major business customers - providing links to their web sites, or hosting web sites on their behalf. Services such as travel products, insurance and so on lend themselves to web delivery.

An example: Suppose you have a corporate customer that is a car dealer. He can publish new car data, current prices and stock levels, colours and so on on the web. The customer can select the model, options and colour, and receive a price and delivery time, and can model the financing (through your bank) and complete the credit application. All that is required is to walk in, sign, and take delivery.

This mechanism works for most goods - and is even easier for lower value items where the payment mechanism can be by account debit or credit card payment.

Farfetched? No. It can be done today (and if you look closely, you might find one or two people trying it out)

Consider a corporate payments terminal delivered across the Internet, using a specific application at the customer end, supplied by the bank, to handle EDI , payments and account management in a secure environment (i.e. using the Internet as a neutral transport mechanism only).

To facilitate usage by customers in different countries, provide multi-currency accounts and cards, denominated in the major currencies. Back this up with electronic, real time, multi currency account to account transfer capability.

Consider the development, in conjunction with credit card companies, of 'Internet only' payment tokens, such as credit cards without physical plastic, enabled for Internet payment capability only.

Internal Developments, and the Intranet. Banks spend a lot of money on systems, systems infrastructure and IT staff. They almost always have a development backlog, and anything that can be done to help this has to be worth a look. The use of Intranet technology is one method.

Delivering documentation, procedures, internal manuals and other material via an Intranet is both simple and cheap. Web servers will now run on almost any platform from mainframes to small PC's, and browsers with a common interface are available for almost any workstation. Training users on the use of an Intranet is simple and cheap.

In addition, if you examine the information requirements of bank personnel, and the system requirements for platform automation and an Internet banking system, there is a lot of commonality. This means that data published on your Internet Web site (such as product and service information, terms and conditions for credit cards, rates, loan modelling etc.) can be copied with no reformatting to an internal Intranet for bank staff use.

For every system about to be developed, consider whether all or part of it could be delivered using Intranet, and how much commonality there is with other Web based deliverables. The results are surprising, especially if the basic Web functionality is enhanced by the use of languages such as Java .

The Future

Predicting what will happen in the future is fraught with danger. Anyone who does it is asking to have those predictions that missed the target come back and haunt them in the future, regardless of the fact that the majority may be right. Regardless, I am going to document the highlights of my predictions of what the future holds. These are educated predictions rather than wild guesses, and I am confident enough in them to present them in public.

  • The Internet will continue to grow rapidly, regardless of potential bottlenecks and capacity issues. This will be facilitated by lower cost entry-level hardware such as the network computer, the availability of Internet access on non-PC platforms such as cable television and 'games' machines such as Nintendo and Sega, and the rapidly climbing performance of telecommunications technology (already 28.8 Kbps and above in home use). The market take up of Internet access will be highest in the business, upper and middle income brackets.
  • Through the increased penetration of Internet access and because of its low cost of delivery, Email will become the preferred method of written communication, surpassing the use of facsimile especially in business communications, although not coming anywhere close to normal mail in terms of volumes. Email content will be enriched by graphics, sound and other multimedia content in proportion with the advances made in the next few years in telecommunications bandwidth. "Junk" and other unsolicited Email will become a problem in the near future, expect to see a wave of Email filter products intended to allow screening of incoming Email.
  • In the near future (two years) Internet will not be used widely for real-time voice communications. Although the facility exists and is used today, it is still far more complex to use than the telephone. It is expected, though, that low resolution video conferencing and real-time audio will be used in specific circumstances in this time period, with applications like call centres being the leaders.
  • The Web Browser (Netscape, Web Explorer etc) will become the common interface for all Internet based user activity. By the use of 'plug ins' and increased capability of underlying operating systems, the current situation of requiring many diverse pieces of software to use all of the Internet's capabilities will disappear very shortly.
  • One of the current growth inhibitors in Europe is the dominance of the English language in Web content. More software providers have identified this need and are providing solutions, and this inhibitor will gradually disappear as more non-English content appears. Expect the majority of growth in the next three years to be in English speaking countries, however. In transaction processing, note that in the USA, most bills are paid by cheque - far higher than the rate in Europe. Thus adoption of transaction processing is likely to be faster in the USA than in Europe initially.
  • Non-Internet specific service providers (such as Compuserve, AOL etc) will diminish in market share and migrate to general ISP capabilities (with value added services such as International access).
  • In less than two years, reliable payments mechanisms will be in place to allow Internet users to make purchases over the Internet. (Internet merchants are expected to sell some US$ 518 million in goods this year, rising to US$ 6.6 billion by the end of the century ). These transactions will be a mix of service payments for information access, intellectual or 'soft' payments for sofware, reports and other electronically deliverable goods, and hard payments for physical product delivery. Although the majority of Internet use today is in information sourcing and distribution, major processors have announced plans and services to process transactions.
  • In the short term, credit cards will continue to be the payment token of choice as the infrastructure and penetration is well established. It is predicted that other payment mechanisms (led, possibly by a 'net only' version of credit or debit cards) will take somewhat longer to mature.
  • Non-bank Institutions will attempt to become Internet based providers of financial services in the business domain currently occupied by banks.
  • Banking and Financial services regulations will cause immense problems for everybody concerned. For instance, is a customer in Canada downloading software from a server in Australia owned by a company in the UK with a settlement account in Brazil liable to pay UK VAT ?
  • Legal problems aside, Banking customer mobility will increase dramatically, enabled by access to Internet based banking, foreign currency denominated credit/debit cards and accounts, and facilities such as the new SWIFT MT101 message type.
  • Internet based banks will have a considerably lower non-interest expense base than traditional Institutions, placing additional pressure on margins.
  • Demand will increase for multi-currency accounts and payments.
  • Banks will increase their penetration across national boundaries into countries in which they may have no physical presence.
  • The availability of automated 'agents' that can explore the Internet and collect data will open new vertical market opportunities and present increased opportunity for focused market segmentation and targeting. Banks will require enormous data warehousing and analysis capability to make best use of this capability.
  • Payments for Internet Commerce consumer purchases will continue to be centred on credit card payment schemes, either directly or back-to-back schemes such as First Virtual Inc. This will account for the majority of the transaction volumes in the mid-range, with large value payments being processed by specific EDI-type applications facilitated by hardware based cryptography and smart cards, and so-called micro transactions (of a few pennies) falling to some of the more creative Electronic cash schemes. It is unlikely that credit card dominance in the consumer mid-range payment sector will diminish before the end of the century, and possibly longer.

 

Conclusion

Internet is here to stay. It is large now, it is rapidly maturing, and it will continue to grow apace, to the point in the medium term when it will challenge (although not necessarily in all cases surpass) traditional forms of communication, information distribution and processing such as telephone, surface mail, fax, radio and television.

This medium will revolutionise the technology, marketing and provision of financial services to the most profitable market segments in banking.

Financial Institutions today have the window of opportunity to lead the revolution, or risk playing catch-up with smaller Institutions or non-Bank players in the future. This window of opportunity is short, and planning and execution of a sound Internet strategy is essential today.

The boldest and most far-sighted institutions will reap immense rewards in the dynamic market enabled by the use of the Internet medium.

Final Word

As noted in the introduction, this subject is huge, and I can only touch on some of the components in a paper such as this. I hope that some of the content has sparked some interest, and possibly raised some areas that you may wish to investigate further.

If you wish to discuss any aspects of this paper, or this subject in general, I may be contacted as follows:

Andrew Marshall
Email: amarshall@amarshall.com
Tel +1 (610) 458-9348
Acknowledgements:

 

Data from the following sources was used in the research and preparation of this paper, and are gratefully acknowledged:
Delphi Consulting Group
                
Forrester Research
Ernst & Young
Booz Allen
                Micheal Killen and Associates
Network Wizards [http://www.nw.com/]
Matthew Grey, MIT
Morgan Stanley
International Data Corporation (IDC)
Georgia Tech Research Corporation GVU centre [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/]
                I/Pro

Appendix "A" Internet sizing and statistics

Sizing the Internet or plotting its growth accurately is difficult. The anarchistic and decentralised nature of the Internet means that estimations are unreliable at best.

Do not, under any circumstances, believe any figures that purport to give accurate numbers as to the number of people using the Internet. As an illustration, published estimates of the number of Web sites vary from a low of 230,000 to a high of 850,000. Some of this is due to differences in definitions and estimation methods, however it reflects the danger of these statistics.

However, some sources of some elements of data are reliable, and by careful analysis of information available it is safe to draw certain conclusions.

The following items are normally used when attempting to size the Internet:

  • Number of Users
  • Number of Hosts
  • and more recently, Number of Web Sites

These are defined as:

  • Number of Users: People with access to Internet facilities such as Email, the Web, etc, through dial up connection, an online service or via a Corporate Local Area network.
  • Number of Hosts: Individual computers with IP addresses
  • Number of Web Sites: Domains offering Web pages.

Number of Users

This is by far the most difficult number to determine accurately. Even statistics that are available are clouded by issues such as account sharing, where a single userid may be shared by more than one family member.

I set out below a table of various sources and data, and make no representations as to their accuracy. It is reasonable to assume that the actual numbers reside within the minimum and maximum bounds and therefore stands at between 17 and 35 million users in North America.

No. Users

Date

Source

Definition

35.0 million

July 1996

Intelliquest

US Internet users

29.0 million

May 1996

Louis Harris

US Internet users

23.5 million

May 1996

IDC

WWW users

16.4 million

April 1996

Hoffman/Novak

US Internet users

17.6 million

March 1996

Wall St. Journal

North America

26.4 million

February 1996

Matrix

World wide users

As far as I can establish, little work has been done on establishing data for non-North American user population. However, an interesting view of penetration and distribution has been used by Michael Killen (Killen and associates). Based on Internet Society and RIPE (Netherlands) statistics, the number of population per Internet registered host as at end 1995 is as follows:

  • USA 1 host per 70 persons ......... growth 10%/month
  • UK 1 host per 133 persons ......... growth 2.8%/month
  • Germany 1 host per 170 persons .... growth 13%/month
  • France 1 host per 390 persons ..... growth 10.5%/month
  • World 1 host per 850 persons

Note that if one assumes a four person family unit, the US figure is one host per sixteen families. As the number of users exceeds the number of hosts, by anybody's estimation, this provides a penetration statistic of one Internet user for every 3-4 US families.

Number of Hosts

Some of the most accurate data available falls within this category, mainly due to the fact that a central organisation (the InterNIC) allocates domain names and IP addresses, and therefore statistical data is available.

The following table shows the growth in both Hosts and Domains since January 1993:

Date

Hosts

Domains

07/96

12,881,000

488,000

01/96

9,472,000

240,000

07/95

6,642,000

120,000

01/95

4,852,000

71,000

07/94

3,212,000

46,000

01/94

2,217,000

30,000

07/93

1,776,000

26,000

01/93

1,313,000

21,000

Please note the following definitions:

A host is defined as a domain name that has an IP address record associated with it. This would be any computer system connected to the Internet via full or part time, direct or dial-up connection.

A domain is defined as a domain name that has name server records associated with it - in other words there may be sub-domains on one or more hosts.

CAUTION:

  • A Host does not equal an Internet user.
  • A Host does not (necessarily) equal a domain.
  • A Host does not equal a server.

The reader is cautioned that while the raw data may be accurate it does not represent the actual number of hosts or domains in use, only those that are registered.

Further, this statistic (number of hosts and number of domains) should be used cautiously when sizing the Internet for business or planning purposes, however it has real value as an indicator of overall growth.

Number of Web Sites

During my research, the most conservative and useful numbers that I found were provided by Matthew Grey at MIT . This shows growth since June 1993, virtually the beginning of the Web.

Month/year

Number of WebSites

June 1993

130

December 1993

623

June 1994

2,738

December 1994

10,022

June 1995

23,500

January 1996

100,000

June 1996

230,000 (est)

Once again caution should be exercised in interpreting these figures. A Web site may or may not be in active use. In addition, the definition od Web Site used varies from person to person. In these figures, the definition provided at the beginning of the Appendix has been used, i.e. Domains offering Web content. However, other definitions are used by a variety of organisations and individuals which can make this number considerably larger. Consider the example of a company with a single domain offering web hosting services. This could be construed as many hundred web sites, although in the definition used in this document (the most conservative I have found, using Matthew Grey's method) it would be classed as one.

Usage Growth Forecast

Given the lack of hard data, growth prediction is somewhat tricky, and liable to inaccuracy. However, two predictions (by IDC and Morgan Stanley) make an attempt at this prediction:

Millions

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

Email users

35

60

80

130

180

200

Net/Web users

9

23

46

81

122

152

International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast 199 million Internet users and 38 million Web users by 1999.

Differences in definition cause these numbers to vary between the organisations, however there are obviously major differences in predictions for Web growth. Personally, I believe that the Morgan Stanley numbers are closer to the truth with regard to Web growth, with in initial surge of the Web user base doubling every year due to enabling technologies, improved and lower cost access, and provision in new world markets, slowing down in a few years to a more confinable annual growth in double digits.

Appendix "B" - Demographics and Geographics

As related in Appendix "A", statistics on the Internet are quite difficult to come by, and to verify, and often conflict. Happily, good quality research data is available, and I would direct the reader to the Georgia Tech Research Corporation's excellent GVU centre research papers .

The highlights of the most recent paper, conducted between April and May 1996, are as follows:

  • Average Age ................................ 33
  • Sex ................................................ 31.5% Female, 68.5% male
  • Average household income ........ US$ 59,000
  • Marital status, Married ................. 41.1%
  • Politics -
    • Moderate 30.1%
    • Conservative 21.1%
    • Liberal 35.18%
  • Access from Home - 55.4% Work - 32.2%

Since the last survey, the average age has risen, the average household income has reduced, the percentage of female users has increased.

Geographically, data is somewhat limited. The only reliable metric is the host distribution previously mentioned, however a consensus of information mainly sourced from Network Wizards is:

Two-thirds of all hosts are in the US.

Americas

8,750,191 hosts

Europe

2,409,871 hosts

Asia/Pacific

1,137,985 hosts

Growth figures for these regions:

Americas

92%

Europe

82%

Asia/Pacific

138%

Top countries in each area (hosts and growth numbers)

Americas - USA

8,224,279

93% growth

Europe - UK

579,492

99% growth

Asia/Pacific

496,427

211% growth

Note that non-US traffic volumes are growing twice as fast as US volumes .

Finally, for those with an interest in such matters:

Internet access platform :

  • Windows 59%
  • Macintosh 28%
  • Unix 5%

 

Back to the home page

Copyright © 1996 Andrew Marshall, All rights reserved.

 

All referenced sources acknowledged.