British users are finding broadband isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, if it means confronting spam and other detritus of the Internet. According to a report by the iSociety project at The Work Foundation to be launched today: ”Ordinary people are promised that broadband makes the internet better; in fact it sometimes leads to a disaster on the desktop which makes people consider stopping using the net altogether.”
Broadband providers and the industry as a whole must, the report says, “stop pouring hundreds of millions of pounds down the drain developing “rich media content” which doesn’t excite their customers” and start providing support. The report also makes another interesting point: the always-on Internet is not about ‘adoption’ — how many people get online — it’s about ‘absorption’ — about how people online actually get into the whole thing and find useful things online to read or do, or to communicate with others.