Taiwan has made impressive strides in closing the digital divide in the past 10 years, but opportunities to learn to use a computer remain scarce for about 1.3 million people, mainly middle-aged and elderly women, Aborigines, new immigrants and people living in remote areas, a government survey released yesterday showed.
It is 10 years since the Cabinet’s Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) began conducting an annual report on the nation’s digital divide.
For the first time, this year’s survey saw the percentage of households with Internet access exceed 80 percent, up from 78.1 percent last year to 80.8 percent, while the percentage of individuals with access to the Internet rose above 70 percent from 67.6 percent last year. More than 53 percent of Internet users have used mobile devices, up from 41.9 percent last year.
“The breakthrough shows that Taiwan has developed into an Internet society. It’s time to waive the problem of the digital divide and move into an era full of digital opportunities. The government has to help people make the best use of the opportunities,” said Ho Chuan-te (何全德), director-general of the RDEC’s Department of Information Management.
Citing an example of public libraries in remote districts lending the public laptops equipped with 3.5G mobile routers, Ho said the service, which has been provided since March, has helped expand Internet access to people who cannot usually afford to pay for it.
Ho said the RDEC would expand the service to 535 laptops in 16 public libraries in eight counties next year, from 330 in 12 libraries in three counties, adding that the government is also considering enacting a law to promote barrier-free Web design in both the public and private sectors to help disabled people access the Internet.
The report showed that 75.6 percent of the population aged 12 or over use computers in their daily lives, up from 72.6 percent last year, and that 70.9 percent of the population have access to Internet.
Based on that, it is estimated that there are about 15.42 million computer users and 14.46 million Internet users in Taiwan who are 12 years of age or older, an increase of 760,000 and 800,000 respectively when compared with last year’s survey.
The main factors contributing to the growth in Internet users this year was the group aged between 51 and 60, with the percentage of the people using the Internet in this group rising from 37.8 percent last year to 47.5 percent this year, the survey showed.
Despite that, the report showed that access to a computer and an Internet service still varies significantly based on the degree of urbanization of the area in which a person lives.
In highly remote townships, 71.4 percent of the households have computers, an increase of 7.9 percentage points over last year, while 61.1 percent of households have access to the Internet, an increase of 3.4 percentage points over last year, the report showed.
It showed that more than 90 percent of the population in Taipei County and Taipei, Tainan and Taichung cities has a computer at home, while 85 percent of the population in Taipei and Taoyuan counties and Taipei, Taichung and Hsinchu cities can access the Internet at home.
Taipei, Taichung and Hsinchu cities are the three areas with the highest Internet-access rate, more than 75 percent, while the access rate in Pintung, Yunlin and Chiayi cities is below 60 percent, the report showed.
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