The second quarter of 2005 saw the number of Internet users in the A.C. of the Basque Country rise by 41,500 to reach a total of 700,000 people using the Internet, 2.2 percentage points more than during the fourth quarter of 2004 and 3.4 more than the same quarter of the previous year, according to Eustat data. This increase means that 38% of the population aged 15 or over connected to the Internet in the last three months.

This increase in Internet users was partly because of the increase of 26,900 mature users –aged between 45 and 64–; and partly due to people in work, who were the group contributing most to the number of Internet users in the survey: 40,600.

Internet users mainly went online from their own home

The percentage of Internet users going online from their own home, 72.8%, is among the highest in the State, although this growth pattern levelled off in the second quarter of 2005, growing by a mere 1.1 per cent.

Gipuzkoa headed the user rates with 40.7% and growth of 5.7 per cent, followed by Álava with 38.5% and a 1.1 per cent rise. Bizkaia, with an increase of 0.5 per cent in the number of Internet users, had the lowest rate, 36.3%.

There was a 4.8 per cent rise in the percentage of Internet users employing Basque to surf the Web during the second quarter of 2005

Whereas 15.6% of Internet users had surfed the Web using Basque in the fourth quarter of 2004, the first quarter of 2005 saw this percentage rise to 20.4%, making almost 143,000 Internet users who employed Basque to move around the Internet.

A decrease of around 9 minutes was noticed in the average length of the last connection, going from 1 hour in the fourth quarter of 2004 to 51.2 minutes in the second quarter of 2005.

20.7% of Internet users, which is to say just over 144,600 people, made some type of purchase through the Internet in the second quarter of 2005

This increase in purchases through the Internet could be linked, among other causes, to the perception of the security of payment through the Internet, since in the fourth quarter of 2004, 55% of Internet users felt very or quite secure when making some payment through the Internet, the second quarter of 2005 saw this percentage rise to 76.4%.

The access to new technology and communication equipment continued to rise in the A.C. of the Basque Country during the second quarter of 2005

The use of computers among the population aged 15 or over came to 59.6% in the A.C. of the Basque Country and rose 3.4 percentage points in relation to the fourth quarter of 2004, with over 50% of Basque families owning a home computer.

The population aged 15 or over with access to the Internet in the second quarter of 2005 rose by 73,500 people –4 percentage points–, topping the 800,000 mark for the first time. This meant that 43.7% of people in the A.C. of the Basque Country were now in possession of this type of equipment.

The number of people with access to a mobile telephone continued to grow and in the second quarter of 2005 there were 6,000 potential new users. The amount of people in Álava with this type of equipment was above the average for the A.C. of the Basque Country, with 90%, followed by those from Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, with 87% and 86% respectively.