BRUSSELS, Belgium - More than half of European homes went online this year as the number using a hi-speed broadband connection to connect to the Internet rose sharply, the EU statistical agency Eurostat said Monday.
One in two people use an Internet search engine while 15 percent of individuals use the net to make phone calls and 13 percent use peer-to-peer file sharing software to swap movies and music, according to the survey based on national figures for the first three months of 2007.
Some 54 percent of households in the EU's 27 nations had access to the Internet, compared to 49 percent in the first quarter of 2006.
Broadband use rose more sharply, up to 42 percent from 30 percent for the same quarter a year ago.
The Eurostat survey gave no margin of error.
The most online EU nation is the Netherlands, where more than four out of five homes have Internet access, and it also leads the way with the highest rate of broadband connections.
Lagging far behind is new EU member Bulgaria where only one in five households has Internet access. Greece, however, has the lowest broadband rate, at just 7 percent, squeaking past Romania at 8 percent.
Some countries are far more Internet savvy than others. The French lead the way in making voice-over-Internet phone calls, followed by Estonians -- no surprise as the tiny Baltic nation spawned online call company Skype.
Nearly a quarter of Dutch and Luxembourgers use the net to download music and movies but only 6 percent of Czechs and Irish do so.
Internet use -- and both the price and technology available to customers -- varies widely across Europe. The European Commission blames governments for not doing enough to open up the market, by forcing former state telecoms monopolies to face competition that would lower prices and get more people online.
