Well, let's put this into context a little?

Just because the UK is behind the 8 ball when it comes to broadband, don't use that as a yard stick to measure people "in the rest of the world". As a matter of fact, the UK is WAY behind most of the developed world in this regard. Percentage of growth of new broadband lines in the UK for 2003 was behind countries like China, Italy, and even Venezuela for cripe sake! You did managed to beat out Lithuania though. Congrats!
1. There are problems in Europe because of the infamous "dot com" bandwagon or "bubble"..........a lot of providers put a massive amount of their venture capital into these worthless shells, and lost the lot...........this is money that should, by rights, have gone into expanding the infrastructure and obtaining more customers. We are suffering for that!

2. Italy is easily explained, their telcos/ISPs were very greedy on prices so people did not use dial up very much. Most people used the net when they got to work, it was a sort of tax free benefit?....not good for security IMHO Now that competition has increased, the price has fallen........and that is first hand information from the chief statistician of a northern Italian province. Having these discussions with other European contacts I do not see the infrastructure investment..............just a shower of vultures squabbling over a roadkill........every month I get solicitations to change my telco, gas and electricity suppliers..........still the same providers, just different people billing me?

3. Percentage growth? has anyone heard the phrase "there are lies, damned lies and statistics"? So I have a country with 10 broadband users, next year I have 20............hey that's a 100% increase?

4. At the end of the day, and before the setting of the sun, the rules of the Electronisphere (my word) will be obeyed. With good luck and a following wind, the maximum range of copper wire ADSL/SDSL is 5,500 yards from the telephone exchange. If there has been little usage, the growth statistics will seem very large, but then you will hit the major capital investment barrier? Also, if you have been upgrading your exchanges to fibre optics, but your land lines are copper wire...............DSL won't work..(I guess we like to find these things out the hard way over here)

I think that more relevant and interesting statistics are number of internet accounts per head of population, and type of connection?

As for WIN98, I do some spare time helping for charitable & non-profit organisations where we provide refurbished computers for old, infirm, educationally challenged and low income people. These are generally donated ex-corporate boxes and we tend to use Win98SE, as that is about the best the hardware can support. So, YES, it is a common operating system in the UK still, as my groups are replicated throughout the Country.

Just a few thoughts