Nearly 40% of the country is online, new report says

According to a report from the Institute for Information Industry, 8.88 million Taiwanese were online at the end of March, 3.08 million of whom were using broadband technology.

The report was commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs to better understand growth in Internet use and to understand how people are connecting to the Web.

According to the report, 39 percent of the population use the Internet often, with 3.62 million people logging on using dial-up connections.

Another million people are using broadband to surf the Internet, which includes 2.7 million using xDSL and 380,000 using cable modem.

The rest connect via ISDN or the academic TANet.

The number of people using broadband services grew by 180,000 over the fourth quarter of last year, due in the main to a significant increase in xDSL subscribers.

Meanwhile, the number of Internet surfers via dial-up connections fell 360,000, or 9 percent, over the fourth quarter of last year.