France outside top ten in study of internet impact

A GLOBAL league table of what impact the internet has on countries has placed France in fourteenth position, behind a top three of Sweden, the USA and the UK.

The World Wide Web Foundation has developed the Web Index as the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the web’s growth, utility and impact on people and nations.

France also lies behind other countries such as Ireland, Switzerland and Canada with the index using data from the past five years to compare elements such as the extent to which relevant and useful content is available to citizens, the political, economic and social impact of the web, connection speeds and levels of censorship.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who founded the World Wide Web Foundation, said: "The Web Index was created to measure the state of the web in the world.

"Each country will see not only where they rank compared to others, but also what the World Wide Web Foundation thinks they need to do to improve."