2011 marks an unbelievable 40 years since the creation of email, and with this month also having been the birthday of World Wide Web creator, Tim Berners-Lee, Sky Broadband has put together a factual homage to the lowly email and a celebration of all things online.

Engineer Ray Tomlinson is widely credited for sending the first ever email in 1971. It was sent from one computer to another computer sitting right beside each other in Cambridge, Massachusetts and it is thought to have read “QWERTYUIOP”. Forty years later and research by Sky Broadband shows that 91% of Britons own an email account, with the average person sending 24 emails per day .

Sky Broadband’s email fact file:

• 42% of the UK population hasn’t sent a handwritten letter in over six months.
• More than double the number of UK workers would prefer to send an email (51%) to a colleague than pick up the phone (24%).
• A quarter of naughty Brits (25%) would panic if their boss could see all of their sent emails.
• One in every ten amorous email users (11%) has flirted with someone they shouldn’t on email.
• One in five (21%) access our emails on the move from our mobile phone handsets.

Today, in addition to the celebrated email, there are over 1 billion messages sent on Twitter every week and 500 million active Facebook users – the internet and social networking have become integrated into the daily lives of homes up and down UK. Little did Tim Berners-Lee realise that his World Wide Web creation in 1989 would result in 71% of homes in the UK having a broadband service 22 years later. With the average goggle eyed Brit spending 4.5 hours a dayi Sky Broadband decided to question the nation on their surfing habits and discovered some fascinating regional variations .

The results showed that nation’s busiest shoppers herald from the South East of the country with 42% of the region using the internet for retail pursuit. Those surfing just for amusement hailed mainly from the Northern Ireland with nearly three quarters of the region admitting that broadband makes their life more fun.

The most sociable region was revealed as the West Midlands, with over two-thirds (66%) using social networks every week – higher than anywhere else in the country. Over a quarter of the Welsh public (28%) revealed that they play online games more than once a week, whilst the region with most passion for a gamble was the North West with one in ten revealing they place a bet at least once a week.

The research also asked respondents to reveal what they couldn’t live without. Broadband internet polled highest every time, beating chocolate, alcohol, sex and even mobile phones to the top spot. Quizzed on why having broadband internet at home was beneficial, top of the list was saving time (78%) and making life easier (70%).

“We are always keen to learn about what makes our customers tick and when we started this research, our aim was to fully understand the broadband market.

What we found in fact was a fascinating series of regional saving habits which seem to be as varied and as interesting as local dialects!” commented Jon Blumberg, Commercial Director at Sky Broadband. “Whilst obviously most of us will use the internet for a multitude of reasons, it’s really interesting to see that the peaks in activity really do vary and spike across the nation.”