The study, carried out by the House of Allander Institute, shows that e-commerce accounts for 3% of turnover for a third of the 258 companies surveyed and 1.2% of service sector jobs. When these figures are compared to the results of a survey carried out with identical criteria in the US it shows that development of the internet in Scotland has been poor. However, it is not all doom and gloom for internet business in Scotland.
The report states that the internet directly supports over 12,500 jobs in Scotland and online commerce is worth £1.52bn to its economy. Also encouraging is the recent news that the development agency, Scottish Enterprise, is to invest £6m towards cutting high-bandwidth telecommunications access costs for Scottish Businesses, which are around 70% higher than in London.