Non- Digitised! You are Missing Out!

Millions of families in the UK are missing out on savings running in the region of a billion pounds a year because they either don’t have access or use the internet.

17% of the entire population, roughly 10 million people have never ever been online and four million of these come from ‘economically or socially excluded backgrounds’ said the Government’s digital inclusion champion

Martha Fox a online tsar had this to say…

…those without access to the web were missing out not only on shopping bargains, but also work and training opportunities and official information on issues like the swine flu outbreak.

Ms Lane Fox who created the famous site LAST MINUTE DOT COM has also been appointed by Gordon Brown to represent people ‘not yet online’ and to create, a plan to bring ‘the web to the socially disadvantaged’.

The first piece of research produced for her by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that the average family would miss out on savings totalling $560 a year if they did not use the internet to shop around for the cheapest deals on products like energy, insurance and household items. The four million economically and socially excluded people without internet access were missing out on an average $300 annually a total of $1.2 billion.

I am interested to see whether mobile broadband is included in this? I do see a lot of people coming out of say, Carphone ware house with the netbooks and pay as you go mobile broadband deals?

The report also detailed that 1.8 million children who grow up in a ‘digitally excluded’ family could increase their earnings by $8,000 EACH

As a consumer, you are missing out on great savings if you don’t shop online, let alone the fact that more and more Government services are going to become digitised. If you look at the recent swine flu scare, think about how much information was online and how much more quickly and timely you got the information. I think it is worth fighting for the rights of people to have the same choices and access to the same benefits as all of us who are web-enabled