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Nation's number of Web users passes the 15 million mark

The nation's number of Internet users went past the 15 million mark last month, with 63 percent of users having access to broadband services, a local researcher said yesterday.

Approximately 5.4 million households have access to Internet services in Taiwan, which represents a penetration rate of 72 percent, a Taiwan Network Information Center's (TWNIC, 台灣網路資訊中心) survey showed yesterday.

Eighty-three percent of households connecting to the Internet via broadband did so through an ADSL service, the survey said.

Internet use through cable modem connection, meanwhile, came in second, at 7.32 percent, the survey showed.

Seventy-nine percent of the nation's online users are aged between 16 and 20 while people above 56 years of age only accounted for 10.8 percent, the survey said.

The survey also found that only 5.8 percent of online users resorted to mobile Internet service, 37 percent of whom paid less than NT$250 per month for access.

"The low utilization rate of mobile Internet service is due to the fact that its services are similar to that of broadband wireless, which do not meet the needs of mobile phone users," Liang Te-hsin (梁德馨), associate professor of statistics and information science at Fu Jen Catholic University, told a press briefing yesterday.

People living in Taipei City and Kaohsiung City registered the highest rates of Internet use at 84.55 percent and 83.9 percent respectively, the survey showed.

Liang said that the imbalance between urban and rural development in Taiwan was cause for concern.

The Internet usage rate in central, eastern and southern Taiwan, Liang said, was only about 50 percent, while in the greater Taipei area more than 80 percent of people had access to the Internet.
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