Active Home Web Use by Country, January 2006

Nielsen/Netratings: The number of active home Internet users continues its growth in a majority of the 11 countries. Yet the overall growth rate stagnated in January due to a decrease in active users in a few countries.

Brazil continued to lose traction with active Internet users, experiencing a 1.41 percent slip. After closing the year with a slight increase to its Internet user base in December, Germany's active users slipped just over half a percent. While France gained the lead in European broadband accounts last year, January showed a loss of 132,724 active users. Declines were also experienced in Sweden and the United States.

Nielsen//NetRatings uses a sampling methodology applied worldwide which allows for aggregation of data on a regional and global basis.

Active Home Internet Users by Country, January 2006
Country	December 2005	January 2006	Change (%)	One-Month Change
Australia	9,904,266	10,026,975	1.24	122,709
Brazil	12,208,375	12,035,681	-1.41	-172,694
France	17,034,848	16,902,124	-0.78	-132,724
Germany	32,071,064	31,877,073	-0.60	-193,991
Italy	16,967,127	17,361,737	2.33	394,610
Japan	40,134,842	39,817,810	-0.79	-317,393
Spain	11,437,670	11,559,842	1.07	122,172
Sweden	4,739,069	4,651,538	-1.85	-87,531
Switzerland	3,577,870	3,604,622	0.75	26,752
United Kingdom	23,812,843	24,360,856	2.30	548,014
United States	143,784,919	143,428,291	-0.25	-356,628
Total	315,672,890	315,626,187	-0.01	-46,703
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, 2006

Active Home Web Use by Country, January 2006

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