by STAFF WRITER
SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, Sept 16, CMC – A study by the Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has found that there has been a dramatic increase in Internet use and access in the region.
According to ECLAC’s State of Broadband 2016 report, which was presented at the second meeting of the Conference on Science, Innovation and ICTs (Information Communication Technologies), 43.4 per cent of all regional households were connected to the internet in 2015, nearly doubling the figure from 2010.
The study found that 4.4 per cent of the inhabitants of Latin America and the Caribbean used the Internet last year, 20 percentage points more than in 2010.
ECLAC said this “shows the important progress made in the region in the last five years in terms of access to the service and its affordability.”
The State of Broadband in Latin America and the Caribbean 2016 study notes that the percentage of Internet users as a proportion of the total population in Latin America and the Caribbean grew 10.6 per cent per year between 2000 and 2015, “which reduced the gap with countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).”
This difference shrank to 25.2 percentage points in 2015 from 37.2 percentage points in 2010.
With regard to access, the document indicated that the number of households connected to the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean grew at an annual average of 14.1 per cent in the last five years, reaching 43.4 per cent of all households in 2015, which nearly doubles the figure from 2010.
According to the study, access to broadband connections increased sharply in the period under study, particularly in the mobile mode, which surged from seven per cent to 58 per cent of the population between 2010 and 2015.
In 2010, the percentage of people with access to fixed broadband and mobile broadband was practically the same, the study notes, adding that between 2010 and 2015, the number of mobile subscribers grew 802.5 per cent, while that of fixed connections rose 68.9 per cent.
But despite this progress, the study found problems persist in terms of quality (connection speeds) and the equitableness of access to the Internet (differences according to geographic location and the population’s socioeconomic situation).
It said that no country in the region has at least five per cent of its connections with speeds of more than 15Mbp; while in advanced countries this percentage is 50 per cent.
In addition, the states found there is a difference of 41 percentage points in Internet penetration between urban and rural areas in the country that has the reatest gap in the region.
In terms of income, the report says the expansion of access has been concentrated “in the richest quintiles, widening the gap with the poorest quintiles.”
