The number of Internet users over 14 years old in the A.C of the Basque Country came to 873,200 in the fourth quarter of 2007, which accounted for 47.4% of the total Basque population in that age bracket, according to Eustat data. This percentage was up by 13.9% compared to the fourth quarter of 2006.

With respect to the second quarter of 2007, the number of Internet users for the A.C. of the Basque country increased by 3.5%, and the greatest increase was in Álava. It was up 9.2% compared to the second quarter of 2007 and moved to second position in terms of the percentage of Internet users, with 47.5%. Gipuzkoa, with an increase of 2.2%, had 46.8% of the Internet users in the last three months. Bizkaia increased by 2.9%, up to 47.7%, the percentage of the population aged over 14 using the Internet and therefore remained in first place.

In terms of age, 91.4% of 15 and 24 year olds used the Internet during the last three months, which was 1.8% more than in the second quarter of the same year. Special mention should be made of the users aged between 55 and 64, up 9.6%, and those aged 45 to 54, up by 5.2%.

Graph 1. Evolution of the Population aged 15 and over by access to ICT equipment in the home per quarter 1999-2007. %

Source: EUSTAT

Gender gap among Internet users increases

The so-called gender gap, which had fallen to 5.6 percentage points in the second quarter of 2007, rose to 6.2 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2007. Therefore, with respect to the population aged 15 and over, male Internet users represent 50.6% of the male population and 44.4% in the case of women. Out of all the people using Internet in the fourth quarter of 2007, 51.9% were men compared to 48.1% women.

In terms of activity, 95.5% of the student population used Internet, while that figure dropped to 64% of the working population and 15% of the unemployed and non-working population. The greatest increase with respect to the second quarter of 2007 was among the working population, which was up 5.1%. In the case of the unemployed and non-working population, the percentage of Internet users fell by 1.5% and the number of students increased by 0.5%.

On the other hand, the number of people connecting from home increased by 4.8% and nearly 80% of the users connected from home. There was also an increase in the number of accesses from the workplace (+2.5%), while the connection from educational centres fell by one percentage point. On the other hand, Internet access from other places (Internet cafés, hotels, leisure areas,..) increased significantly and was up 41.9% with respect to the second quarter of 2007.

Significant increase in the use of English to browse online

The percentage of Internet users browsing in English increased by 12.1%, while the number of people browsing in Basque was up by 6.7% and in Spanish by 4%. The average duration of the online connections was 41 minutes in the fourth quarter of 2007, which was down by 12 minutes with respect to the second quarter of the year.

27.4% of the Internet users over 14 years old bought products or services online in the last quarter.

The number of people that bought items online rose slightly. In the fourth quarter of 2007, 1,500 people more shopped online, which means that nearly 240,000 users had purchased something online. This figure represents an annual increase of 27.5%.

The number of Basque households with access to ICT equipment continues to increase

The number of Basque households with Information and Communication Technologies equipment continues to increase. In the fourth quarter of 2007, 57% of the households in the A. C. of the Basque Country had a computer, which was 3.8% up on the second quarter of 2007 and 9.3% more with respect to the same quarter in the previous year.

With respect to Internet access, there are slightly over 365,000 families, 45.7%, which have access to this service, which, therefore, means that there were 18,900 new families (5.5%) with Internet connections in the fourth quarter of 2007. In annual terms, there were 14.2% more households with access to Internet than in the same quarter for the previous year. The number of people aged over 14 with access to the Net increased by 32,800 people, up by over three percentage points, which brings the total potential users in the household to nearly one million.

Eighty-eight per cent of households have mobile phones. If we refer to the population aged 14 and over, the percentage that owns a mobile phone came to 92.6%, 1.4 percentage points more than in the fourth term of 2006.

Table 1. Information Society Survey (ESI-Families)

Source: EUSTAT