Brussels, 14/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - An investigation by Eurostat published on Monday outlines the rapid growth in Internet usage and mobile telephones in the European Union. The number of personal computers (PC) in used, increasing 10% per year in the EU, has reached 100 million units in 2000, which means that 25% of the European population is equipped with a PC, against 6% of the world population. Out of the 400 million Internet users counted in the world in January 2001, more than 130 million are concentrated in the EU, the United States has 175 million and the Japanese 43 million. 33% of Europeans frequent the Internet, while only 7% of the world population have access to the network. The most notably increase is that of telephone subscriptions in the EU, which rose 60% in 2000, totalling 235 million at the end of this year: at the beginning of April 2001, the number of subscribers exceeded 250 million, covering more than 63% of the European population.