The number of Internet users over 14 years old in the A.C of the Basque Country totalled 908,700 in the second quarter of 2008, which represented 49.3% of the total Basque population in that age bracket, according to Eustat data. This percentage was up by 4.1% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007.

By province, the number of users grew more in Gipuzkoa. It was up 7.5% compared to the second quarter of 2007 and moved up to first position in terms of the percentage of Internet users, with 50.2%. Álava, with an increase of 5%, accounted for 49.7% of the Internet users in the last three months. Bizkaia increased the percentage of the population aged over 15 that uses the Internet, by 1.9%, up to 48.7%.

Nine out of every ten 15 to 24 year olds are Internet users

By age groups, 91% of 15-24 year olds have used Internet during the last three months, 1.2% less than in the fourth quarter of 2007. The 38% increase in the number of users between 55 and 64 is noteworthy, even though the absolute number of user is low, just 4.5% of the total, in that age bracket.

Graph 1. Evolution of the Population aged 15 and over by access to ICT equipment in the home per quarter 1999-2008. %

Source: EUSTAT

Gender gap among Internet users increases

The so-called gender gap, which had increased to 6.2% in the fourth quarter of 2007, was down to 7.1% in the second quarter of 2008. Therefore, with respect to the population aged 15 and over, male Internet users represent 53% of the male population and 45.9% in the case of women. Out of all the people using Internet in the second quarter of 2008, 52% were men compared to 48% of women.

In terms of activity, 96.3% of the student population uses Internet, while that figure drops to 66.9% when it comes to the working population and 16.7% of the unemployed and inactive population. The largest increase with respect to the fourth quarter of 2007, with 9.8%, was among the unemployed and inactive population. In the case of the working population, the percentage increased by 4.4% and decreased by 1.9% in the case of students.

Most users accessed Internet from their own home

The number of people connecting from home increased by 2%2 and nearly 82% of the users connect from home. On the other hand, the connections from the place of education fell by one percentage point and connections from other locations, such as Internet cafés, libraries, etc., by 3.7 percentage points.

One out of every fiver Internet users browse the net in Basque

The percentage of Internet users that browse in English has decreased by 5.5%, while the number of people browsing in Basque was up by 2.5% and in Spanish by 3.6%. The average duration of the online connections was 45.6 minutes in the second quarter of 2008, which was up by 4,5 minutes with respect to the fourth quarter of 2007.

24,100 fewer Internet users bought products or services online in the last quarter

The number of people over 14 that made purchases through the Net fell by 3.7 percentage points. In the second quarter of 2008, 24,100 fewer people shopped online, which means that nearly 215,300 users purchased something online.

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 second quarter of 2008, 57.1% of the households in the A. C. of the Basque Country had a computer, which was 3.6% up on the fourth quarter of 2007 and 7.5% more with respect to the same quarter in the previous year.

With respect to Internet access, there are slightly over 393,000 families, 47.5%, which have access to this service, which, therefore, means that there are 28,000 new families (7.7%) with Internet connections in the first quarter of 2008. In annual terms, there were 13.5% 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 grew by 42,500 people, up 2.3 percentage points. There are therefore more than million potential Internet users in the household.

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 stand at 92.7%.

Table 1. Information Society Survey (ESI-Families)

Source: EUSTAT