Why will Italy overtake the UK in internet penetration? Because the Italians live in apartments, and the British live in houses. At least that is one of the factors behind the likely acceleration in a country that has so far failed to jump on the internet bandwagon.

One of the problems Italy faces has been poor fixed line access - but the problem lies not in the national infrastructure (which is sound), but in the "last mile", the connection from exchange to home. This is now being tackled - and because it is much easier to wire up a block of apartments with 50 homes than 50 houses on a street, the process should be relatively rapid.

Internet-related predictions have been notoriously unreliable. However, I think it likely that the table accompanying this article will prove pretty accurate, partly because there is now enough past data to build predictive models, and partly because Net Profit's chief statistician, Qmars Safikhani, is a devil for detail. And it is details such as a country's ability to cable quickly, as well as a raft of social, political and economic factors, that help build a sound model.

This table returns to the most basic indicator of all - the one we all used to watch but have now forgotten about - internet penetration. It ranks West European countries according to the internet penetration we expect in 2004. Our forecasts take into account extrapolation of past trends, flattening-off as a country reaches saturation, and a number of factors including telecom pricing, infrastructural maturity, the ability of countries to adapt technologically, and a host of specific factors.

The Italian sorpasso is a rerun of the mid-Eighties, when the country pulled past the UK in GDP per capita, causing great excitement (it has since dropped behind again). The key lies in the final column, which shows compound annual growth rate in internet take-up.

Britain will suffer from its past success: it simply cannot keep up the growth it managed when it was the first country to introduce free internet access. The relatively slow take-up and high price of broadband will not help.

Italy, by contrast, has a lot of catching up to do, but there are signs that it is now getting the internet bit between its teeth. There are heavy advertising campaigns for ISDN (not broadband, but better than a modem). Tiscali is one of the biggest internet service providers in Europe, and has launched the continent's first satellite broadband service. And, as we have pointed out before, the Italians are likely to be big users of mobile internet (not least because they have come to distrust fixed line phones).

What of the others? Again the answer lies in the forecast growth rate, which in turn is dependent on many factors. The Netherlands arrival in the second slot - only after Finland - is arguably less surprising than the fact that it has lagged so far. With its highly-educated population, widespread understanding of English, 98 per cent penetration by cable and sophisticated industrial and service infrastructure, it has a perfect profile for highly-wired society. But it is also a conservative society, and not one that jumps on bandwagons.

The Dutch, like the Germans, are not big users of credit cards, and have been notably suspicious of e-commerce. It was businesses that pulled the Netherlands into the electronic world; but having seen that the internet is quite useful really, they are now taking to it in a big way.

Belgium, which has many of the same characteristics, is also rising fast and is highly likely to be very near the top within five years.

The fastest growth among large industrialised countries will be in France. Again, this is catch-up: a country that invented the "internet" 15 years before anyone else - in the form of Minitel - was bound to resist the arrival of an all Anglo-Saxon rival. Equally, it was bound to take to it eventually.

One of the intriguing features of this table is that allows us to see signs of internet saturation. Look at the US, which still leads the ranking this year, but drops back sharply, thanks to a meagre forecast growth rate. Why is this? Because in such a vast and diverse country, there will always be people who never get to use new technology for social, economic and cultural reasons. It seems likely that within five years pretty much every household in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands will be connected. The same is not true in the US: I doubt, for example, that there will ever be many Amish Web surfers.

David Bowen is editor-in-chief of Net Profit, publisher of Net Figures. For free access to the Advantage Index, a ranking of 73 countries by "new economy" indicators, see www.netprofit.co.uk/ftadvantage. Statistical editor: Qmars Safikhani: qsafikhani@netprofit.co.uk

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