Family Information and Communication Technologies Use 2007

67% of people use the Multibanco ATM system for ecommerce operations.

34% of people make payments to the State using the Multibanco system.

94% of people who have attended higher education, 88% of people with secondary schooling and 30% of people with the 9th year of education or less use computers.Portugal lies in 4th 6th and 20th place in the EU respectively for these indicators.

The most popular activities users use the Internet for are email (84%), searching for information on goods and services (83%), using the Internet for learning purposes (67%), chats, messenger and similar (57%), posting content (53%) and searching for health information (45%).

The INE – National Statistics Institute published an information note for the media on the 2007 Family Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Use Survey (text in Portuguese) yesterday – 3rd December 2007. This survey was conducted by this institute in conjunction with Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC). This survey, which is conducted yearly and in accordance with Eurostat’s methodological recommendations, refers to data from the 1st quarter of 2007.

The survey gathered data on ecommerce operations performed using the Multibanco system for the first time. A very high proportion of 16 to 74 year olds (67%) use the Multibanco system. The ecommerce transactions conducted by these people included: pay-as-you-go mobile phone top-ups (76%), payment of water, electricity, cable TV, telephone services, etc. (57%), paying for non-Internet orders (e.g. catalogue purchases (14%), paying for Internet orders (10%), buying tickets for shows (9%), buying tickets for public transport (9%)).

Another type of transaction used by a high percentage (34%) of Multibanco users is payments to the State (tax, social security contributions, etc.).

The number of households with broadband Internet access rose 25% from 2006 to 2007, increasing from 24% to 30%. 77% of households with the Internet now have a broadband connection.

According to ANACOM data for the third quarter of 2007, landline broadband Internet penetration was 15%, and therefore 64% up on the 1st quarter of 2005. In addition to this, there was a significant increase in mobile broadband Internet penetration, measured by the percentage of people with mobile broadband Internet access and who used the service at least once, which hit 11% in the 3rd quarter of 2007. In fact, broadband mobile Internet access has recently been gaining increasing importance. Growth in mobile broadband Internet penetration from the 1st to the 3rd quarter of 2007 was 38%, which is very high and is all the more noteworthy when one bears in mind that this figure was only 1.8% in the 2nd quarter of 2006, i.e. a six fold increase in a single year. Given this recent development, when observing broadband Internet access penetration, mobile access has to be included in the equation, as it is reaching a very significant figure compared with landline access.

The percentage of those with secondary schooling using the Internet is 81% in 2007, compared with 77% in 2005. Portugal now lies in 5th place in the EU27, behind the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark and France only and neck and neck with Finland and Sweden.

The percentage of those having attended higher education using the Internet is 90% in 2007, compared with 85% in 2005. Portugal lies in 7th place in the EU27, behind the previous countries only and neck and neck with Slovenia.

The percentage of those with the 9th year or less of schooling using the Internet is 24% in 2007, compared with 16% in 2005 and 19% in 2006. This educational group saw the highest growth from 2006 to 2007 (26%). However, this figure is still one of the lowest in the EU15, as Portugal had the third lowest rate for this indicator in the EU15 in 2005, above Italy (17%) and Greece (9%) only, and the current figure for Portugal (24%) is the same as that achieved by Ireland and above that of Spain (23%) in 2006, when no other EU15 countries had lower figures.

94% of people who have attended higher education, 88%% of those with secondary schooling and 30% of people with the 9th year of schooling or less use computers respectively. These figures were 90%, 86% and 24% respectively in 2005. The most growth (12% annual average) occurred in the group with the lowest level of schooling, while the figures for the groups with secondary schooling and higher education have risen moderately, but have already hit high percentages. In actual fact, Portugal lay in 4th and 6th place of the EU27 countries in these two groups respectively in 2007. Portugal only trailed the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Sweden in the first group and only trailed these countries and two other Nordic countries in the second group, where it tied with the United Kingdom.

In 2007, use of both the Internet (97%) and computers (99%) among students is very high, which demonstrates how these tools have been introduced efficiently in schools. This has resulted in Portugal being placed respectively in 8th and 4th place in the EU27, tied with Austria, Denmark and Latvia for Internet use and alongside Germany, Austria, Luxemburg and Sweden for computer use.

As regards activities carried out on the Internet, the most popular with users in 2007 are communicating, interacting and posting content – email (84%), chats, messenger and similar (57%), posting content on websites like hi5, Myspace, Youtube or SapoVídeo (53%) –searching for information about goods and services (83%), consulting the Internet for learning purposes (67%), searching for health-related information (45%),and obtaining information on Government bodies (42%). The biggest increases from 2005 to 2007 were recorded in videoconferencing telephoning/contacting (47% average annual growth), the development of blogs (43% average annual growth) and searching for health information (20% average annual growth).

As regards ecommerce, the percentage of 16 to 74 year olds ordering or purchasing items on Internet pages stands at a mere 6%, a very low figure in the EU despite having registered a 50% increase since 2005, yet which contrasts with the 33% (83% of Internet users) who search for information on goods and services on the Internet, and with those who use the Multibanco system for ecommerce (51% for mobile phone top-ups, 38% for paying for water, electricity, cable TV, telephone services, etc., 9% for non-Internet distance purchasing, 7% for paying for Internet purchases, 6% to buy tickets for shows, and 6% to buy tickets for public transport, which correspond to 76%, 57%. 34%, 14%, 10%, 9% and 9% of Multibanco users respectively.