News
It’s gin o’clock as 15 million U.K. adults regularly call time on the Internet.
Broadband notspots are the scourge of the universe. Anyone unlucky enough to be trapped in one is banished to a life of social and economic deprivation, unable to apply for work or sign online petitions, let alone look at pictures of long-forgotten school friends in wedding attire.
On the other hand, if Ofcom’s latest Communications Market Report (CMR) is anything to go by, they might just be the happiest people going, their existence uncluttered by the banal minutiae of online life, also known as Twitter.
According to the U.K. telco regulator’s report, published on Thursday, 15 million adults have taken time offline. 25% of these people spent a day without the Internet, 20% lasted a week, and 5% went cold turkey for a whole month.
Far from hating the experience, a third of those who temporarily shunned the Web said they were more productive, which runs counter to almost everything we are told about the Internet these days.
Furthermore, 27% found it liberating, and 25% "enjoyed life more," said Ofcom, which is a pretty damning indictment of the Internet, really. I mean, why are we torturing ourselves with the Internet when there is a whole world out there, just waiting to be sampled?
I should probably have an answer for that, since my livelihood depends on people using the Internet to access Total Telecom
and learn about the industry. Oh well.
According to Ofcom’s CMR, 16% of U.K. adults have actively sought out holiday destinations that lack Internet access, while 9% have intentionally travelled to a place that has neither Internet nor mobile phone coverage.
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, there is at least one now deliberately catering to this group of digital burnouts, the ones who aren’t teetotal, anyway.
The recently-opened Gin Tub, in the seaside town of Hove, made headlines this week for having its own Faraday cage that blocks mobile phone signals.
"I just wanted people to enjoy a night out in my bar, without being interrupted by their phones," explained proprietor Steve Tyler, in a Sky News report on Tuesday. "So rather than asking them not to use their phones, I stopped the phones working."
Incidentally, every table at the Gin Tub has its own telephone, which patrons can use to phone in their drinks order, thereby eliminating one of the most frustrating aspects of modern nightlife: trying to place an order at a busy cocktail bar. People have read War and Peace in less time than it takes to mix up a round of various different cocktails, when all I’m after is a pint of something hoppy that comes ready-mixed.
Anyway, back to the Gin Tub’s Faraday cage, and it is questionable whether deliberately using one to block phone signals is legal.
Ofcom’s Website, under the heading "deliberate interference," says that the use of "any apparatus, whether or not wireless telegraphy apparatus, for the purpose of interfering with any wireless telegraphy, is an offence under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006."
The Gin Tub’s legal department might want to look into the details. Common sense says that the venue probably has a landline for emergency communication, and any patron needing to use their phone can step outside, but common sense rarely prevails in situations like these.
Meanwhile the 15 million U.K. adults temporarily turning their backs on connectivity have done little to curtail the inexorable growth in mobile data usage over the past 12 months.
According to this week’s CMR, mobile data traffic in the U.K. increased to 873 Petabytes in 2015 from 533 PB in 2014. Over the same period, the number of active mobile subscribers edged up to 84.8 million from 83.7 million, while 4G subscriptions surged to 39.5 million from 23.6 million.
Citing statistics from Nokia Bell Labs, Ofcom said that "by 2020, daily global demand for mobile data will be between 30 and 45 times that in 2015."
The jury remains out on whether telcos will reap any kind of financial benefit though.
Ofcom said that in the U.K., the average monthly spend per household on telecoms services reached £82.17 in 2015, up from £79.65 in 2014. However, total operator revenue was broadly flat at £37.5 billion, compared to £37.3 billion in the previous year.
I should spend some trying to come up with a solution to the telcos’ age-old predicament, but I might just travel to Hove to ‘inspect’ a certain Faraday cage instead.
