As many as 78 percent of Singaporeans feel a negative emotion when they are without Internet access and the average Singaporean believes he/she could only survive 7.3 hours without Internet access.

Also, 43 percent of Singaporeans actively use the Internet for over six hours every day - the second highest percentage worldwide after India.

These were among the many interesting findings in Tata Communications’ global report revealed today through a statement issued in Singapore.

Surprisingly, in spite of their strong emotional connection to the Internet, nearly one quarter of those surveyed do not understand where the Internet resides.        

The report captures responses from 9,417 Internet users across six emerging and developed countries - France, Germany, India, Singapore, the US, and the UK – to better understand how people use, engage and connect with the Internet today. Nearly 1,000 respondents from Singapore participated in the study.

Interestingly, the report said 38 percent of surveyed Singaporeans would forgo alcohol in favour of Internet access, with 27 percent choosing the online world over television and 20 percent willing to sacrifice chocolate for their digital connections.

Singaporeans also have difficultly in differentiating the Internet and the World Wide Web with 69 percent of the respondents believing both are the same while another 62 percent of the respondents mistakenly believing that Internet has unlimited capacity.

On how the Internet benefited the society, the majority of the respondents said it had connected the people globally while only a very small number of respondents said Internet has given people a democratic channel for expression.

The report also revealed respondents from Asia and those from the USA and Europe were distinctly different in their vision of the most ‘inspirational opportunity’ that the Internet will deliver in the future.

Here, 32 percent of surveyed Singaporeans and 27 percent of surveyed Indians identified ‘smart cities’ as their preferred choice for what the Internet would enable in the future.

Respondents from the UK, France, Germany and the USA, meanwhile, picked ‘light speed connectivity’ as their preferred choice for the most inspirational opportunity for change in the next three to five years that the Internet would facilitate.

In the same statement, chief marketing officer and CEO of Tata, Julie Woods-Moss commented: "Over 24 percent of the world’s Internet routes used our network, and this affords us a rare advantage and a perspective that helps connect with our customers globally across emerging markets and developed economies."

- Bernama