Two Canadian Internet Studies Released This Week

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission released a report on the state of competition in the Canadian telecommunications market this week. The report highlights the very impressive growth rate of Internet connectivity in the country as well as the expansion of broadband access: 59 percent of Canadian households now subscribe to the Internet, and those with high speed broadband connections are nearly three times as numerous than the households with dial-up.

And the Canadian Internet Project blew gaping holes in the myth that Internet users read less. The study, one of the most comprehensive ever conducted on Internet users in Canada, found that those who go online for their news are more likely to pick up a newspaper, or read a book than non-users of the Internet. More than 3,000 Canadians were interviewed between May and June 2004 in a rrpresentative phone survey.

Books were important for 55 percent of Web users vs. 38 percent of non-users.

Among other findings:

• The majority of Canadians are heavy Internet users with 56 percent saying they are online seven or more hours per week;
• Canadians are much more likely to see the Internet as important for information than for entertainment;
• E-mail is the principal activity of all Internet users – 91 per cent of online Canadians use e-mail;
• Canadian users average 13.5 hour per week online;
• A majority of Canadian Internet users have made purchases on the Internet;
• A high proportion of both users and non-users expressed concern about releasing personal information on the Internet; and
• A majority of Canadians in lower income families reported having access to the Internet, indicating that cost is not a major deterrent to Internet use. Less than 10 per cent of non-users cited cost as a reason for not being online.

However, most Canadians are unaware of Canadian content on the Internet. Francophones are more likely to access Canadian culture content than English Canadians.

The Project is an ongoing research initiative led by a consortium of universities with support from provincial, federal and private-sector partners. It is affiliated with the World Internet Project, a research group involving 25 countries that seeks to compare data about Internet use around the world based on standardized surveys.