EU reports rise in broadband Internet lines

BRUSSELS — The European Union says 6 million more people in the bloc signed up to broadband Internet access over the last year.

It said Wednesday there were 119 million broadband subscriptions across the 27-nationEU in July 2009, up from 113 million a year earlier. That means that that nearly one in four people in the EU, or 23.9 percent, can access the Web at higher speeds — far off an EU goal for one in three households to have broadband by 2010...