Europeans Choosing To Surf The Web On Their Own Turf

The Internet is growing so fast in Europe that it is shedding its dependence on the U.S., according to a report by The Yankee Group Europe. While half of European Web traffic went to the U.S. in 1998, by the end of last year two-thirds remained in Europe. Hub cities Frankfurt and Amsterdam are now running nine times as much bandwidth -- the yardstick for measuring information transmitted -- to other European centers than to the U.S. While the top Internet highway in Europe last year connected London and New York, the next six busiest routes all linked European cities. The Yankee Group forecasts that European Internet users will rise from today's 40 million to 190 million within five years. In France Internet traffic during the first half of 1999 was triple that for the same period a year earlier. Half of Europe's Internet traffic travels over networks supplied by Canada's Nortel Networks.