Communication, tentacles of the network

2000/06/25 Kortabarria Olabarria, Beñardo - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Internet

More than 300 million websites on the internet. The figure is not small, but keep in mind that on Earth we live more than 6,000 million. Therefore, it is not for so much, is it? According to statistics, currently 200 million people use the Internet daily: In Africa about 2 million, in Asia 34 million, in Europe 48 million, in the Middle East approximately one million, about 113 million in Canada and the United States, and in South America almost 5.5 million. Of the total, 65% are men and 35% are women. The network grows 100% year after year and Finland is the country with the highest percentage of connection. The 30% of Internet users have doctoral studies, 40% higher studies, the remaining 30% have hardly any studies.

Taking into account the linguistic criteria, there is also a look at the network. On the Internet, about 215 million web pages are written in English, 18 million in Japanese and German, 12 million in Chinese and 9 million in French, the written in Spanish do not reach 8 million. The Basque language schools are 36.321. Although the mere number may lead to thinking otherwise, Basque is not so bad about the number of speakers in each language. The first place is for the English, then comes to the Isés, the third is for the Swedish, the fourth for the Danish and the fifth for the Norwegian. In this classification the Basque language occupies the 16th place, behind the Catalan, but ahead of the Spanish, the Russian, the Chinese or the Arabic.

And in our case how is the subject of telecommunications? Do we approach the data of the developed countries?..we would love to give data of the whole Basque Country, but those that follow refer only to the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.

Let's start with email and internet accounts. In the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, in March of this year, there were 474,262 e-mail addresses. Of these, 22.7% were collective addresses, with an average of 8 personal addresses in each of them. If compared with the Spanish State, it can be said that the connection rate of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country is similar, but there is a huge hole with respect to Europe. In fact, in Spain the Internet connection rate is 10.50% over the total population and in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country this rate is 10.20%, while the average European connection rate is much higher than 19.20%. As for the rest of the autonomy of the State, the highest connection rate is that of Catalonia with 15.90% and that of Galicia with 6.90%. As for the number of web pages, there are 24,132 of which 9,957 are personal in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.

In addition to the development of the Internet, in the field of telecommunications, there has been a revolution in mobile telephony. The Basque Country has not been left aside from this revolution and the data are representative. At present, telephone subscribers exceed 700,000, which means that 36.08% of the population uses the mobile phone. As for the Historical Territories, Bizkaia leads the set with 40.18% of its mobile phone user population. In Alava this percentage drops to 32.23% and in Gipuzkoa to 30.82%. In the period of one year, from January 1999 to January 2000, the number of subscribers has increased by 112, by 8%. Comparing the data of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country with other European countries, we observe that we are there. In Spain, for example, 37.65% of the population uses the mobile phone, while in France the figure drops to 34.01%, in Germany 28.28%. In the UK and Italy the percentages are higher, with 40.54% and 52.03% respectively.

We could also provide the number of telecommunications equipment. That is, the number of fixed telephones per family, the number of mobile phones, the number of computers, the number of computers with Internet connection and the number of users of the email. Although the following table shows more detailed, it should be noted that 30% of the families of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country -197,000 families - have a mobile phone, while families with a landline reach 95% -651,000 families. The number of computers is also considerable, as one in three families in the Basque Autonomous Community has 214,000 households. The 6% of them have email and those who have Internet connection exceed 7%. Bizkaia is the territory with the highest percentage of mobile phones, Álava with computers and, therefore, with Internet connection and e-mail users, being Gipuzkoa the territory with the highest percentage of fixed telephones.

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