To: Shumway who wrote (1738 ) 3/29/2001 2:01:36 AM From: Chisy Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1848 European Internet News: Shumway, do you think there is a good future for WAVC in Europe? Wednesday March 28 10:31 AM ET Europe's Web Usage Rockets After Flat Fees LONDON (Reuters) - Internet usage in European households has rocketed in the past nine months after companies began offering flat fees that included phone-line time as well as Internet access, according to a survey released on Wednesday.Between June 2000 and February 2001, time spent online at home more than trebled in France and Spain and almost doubled in Britain, new research from Jupiter MMXI found.In Germany, monthly time online increased by 226 percent to 13 hours, the longest in Europe.European Internet service providers were the first to offer free Internet access and earned money from taking a percentage of the per-minute fees that telecoms companies charged for phone usage. Last year, companies in many countries such as France, Germany and Britain introduced flat-fee packages to cover phone usage as well.In Spain and Norway, Web surfers now spend an average nine hours online per month, in Italy and Denmark close to eight hours and in Britain and France around seven hours.AOL Europe (NYSE:AOL - news) said last week the average time a subscriber was online had doubled to one hour a day in the three months since its launch of a flat-fee package in Britain.Portals remained the most visited destinations on the Web, but Europeans increasingly go to entertainment and music sites and are also getting used to handling their finances online.In February some 85 percent of all Internet users visited portals, such as Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Corporate sites were checked out by 62 percent of surfers, and shopping sites by 46 percent. One in three Internet users at home visited business and finance sites. dailynews.yahoo.com