The JNLR figures came out this week and as well as having the usual Radio listenership stuff they had other trends on Internet usage and gadget usage. I unfortunately don’t have access to the data (you have to pay for it) but was told by a few friends and journalists about it. The biggie was that 60% of people have never used email and that only 45% of people either at home or work have access to the Internet. 14% of people surveyed have DSL at home and 37% have regular Internet access. I’m waiting on clarifications on these figures especially the “never used email” bit. Anyone know TNS MRBI people who could clarify these figures?
Piaras briefed us about the last JNLRs which showed 14% of people had an mp3 player. The most recent figures state that 8% of adults have an iPod. That’s quite surprising to me. Very high.
The low usage of Internet reflects an IrelandOffline press release on the digital divide we sent out earlier this week which quoted ComReg figures showing only 37% of households go online and only 1/4 of them use broadband. The big issue with the figure apart from being low is that it hasn’t changed in two years.
I’m genuinely shocked at this email usage figure and the fact that when you add work and home net access the usage figure is only 45%. So much for knowledge economy, so much for the digital hub.
UPDATE: Sunday Times piece on this.
That is quite low (internet usage and broadband subsription rates) but when you take into account the slow roll-out of broadband around the country it’s not that surprising. I’m living in the suburbs of Cork City, not a million miles from the city. The only broadband available to me is Smart and even that has taken since July, when they told me it is available, to get installed. At present I have no telephone line and no broadband as we have had to switch from an Eircom number to a Smart one. The old line was disconnected but unfortunately the change-over to the new one wasn’t as seamless as we hoped for.
Knowledge economy indeed.
Oh dear God and we want to attract foreign investment here!?
Seriously that figure has to be wrong though. I don’t understand why the Internet research isn’t distributed. All I could find was the listenership data.
They surveyed close to 10,000 people!
That would seem about right. Eircom controls almost the entire ‘last mile’ to internet access. And Eircom has for years fought flat rate access, and broadband. ADSL has been forced on them. I have BT, but it required Eircom to but a ADSL connection into the local switch center to get it done. Until Eircom updates the infrastructure to suport the technology, vast areas of Ireland will go unconnected.
Definitely had to be something wrong with the methodology. Everybody is a white collar job uses email so I’d really like to know what question was posed to them.
Comreg corroborates these numbers. They report that only 37% of those surveyed have internet access in the home, which would tend to support the premise.
See http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg0586b.pdf for details.
I finally got my broadband from Smart about 5 months after them saying it would be available!
[…] It could be right though, because I found this post quoting this blog about this article regarding a Choimisiún Craolacháin na hÉireann survey (overkill, I know, it’s just so that unbelievers can check my sources), claiming only 40% of the Irish use email. And that includes Dublin. Email isn’t that widespread as I thought then. […]
Fucki’n idiot nation. Nothing goes here as it shoud.
Dumb irish nationalists.
Everyone have a car, but don’t know how to drive it.
Everyone have have a computer, but don’t know what to do with it.
Everyone have a brain but don’t know how to use it!!!