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11.25.2001 - Web Traffic surges after Sept. 11
Need for news, worry about mail system seen as prompting increase
Online bill paying, business email and Internet traffic are up in Southwest Florida, apparently the result of post-Sept. 11 anxiety.
"I think this whole anthrax scare is what's driving this. I think people see it as a basic way to avoid handling the mail," said Jason Duff, Sprint spokesman in Altamonte Springs.
Online bill payment by Sprint's residential customers increased 54 percent in October. Overall, Sprint's online bill paying increased 244 percent from the second to third quarter.
 BUSINESS ON THE RISE: Peter Seif, president of Synergy Networks in Fort Myers, has seen Internet traffic through his company's servers increase by 25 percent to 30 percent since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Most of the increased traffic is from e-mail and visits to news sites, Seif said.
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Peter Seif, president of Synergy Networks, a Southwest Florida Internet service provider, said business e-mails with attachments are increasing.
"People have been using email a lot more since the mail issues," said Seif, who said e-mail messaging and bandwidth use are up 25 percent among his more than 1,000 business customers.
"We expect that number to continue to increase as businesses rely more heavily on the Internet for basic communications." Seif said. |
Users logging onto news sites also increased their Internet use.
Findwhat.com, a Fort Myers company which tracks Internet use, saw an immediate spike on and after Sept. 11, said Craig Pisaris-Henderson, president.
The company operates both a search engine and a pay-per-click service where clients bid for top placement on search engines. During its third quarter, FindWhat generated 36 million paid click-throughs.
Web site traffic was up 40 percent for the NBC and ABC television affiliates here in September, Seif said. Synergy Networks operates the servers for Waterman Broadcasting.
To keep up with expected increases in demand, Synergy Networks is installing a redundant fiber route into its Fort Myers building to double its capacity. This second fiber route will be in place by December.
Sprint also is making improvements to handle the increased interest in online bill paying. It redesigned the section of its Web site used by local residential customers - sprint.com/local - to improve navigation and to offer new billing features, Duff said. Customers can now see who they called, dispute a charge, and download their bills to a spreadsheet online.
"We see an average monthly increase in online bill paying of about 10 percent per month. So, a 45 percent increase in October is huge," Duff said. "We also saw a 44 percent increase in business bill payments online in the same period."
Duff said Sprint customers were worried about delivery delays in the U.S. Postal System as letters are being tested for anthrax.
"Based on feedback from our call center customers, we've had a lot of people worried about their bills coming in on time," Duff said. "The majority of that is from the anthrax scare."
- Joan D. LaGuardia, www.news-press.com |
