60% of Irish People have Never Used Email

November 25th, 2005

Filed under:
Internet

60% of Irish People have Never Used Email

Isn’t that hard to believe? That’s what Damien Mulley reports this week (thanks to Tom Raftery for the pointer):

The biggie was that 60% of people have never used email and that only 45% of people either at home or work have access to the Internet. 14% of people surveyed have DSL at home and 37% have regular Internet access. I’m waiting on clarifications on these figures especially the “never used email” bit.

Damien runs an organization called Ireland Offline, which lobbies for “affordable, unmetered and broadband Internet access in Ireland”. As I understand it, there’s a broadband monopoly in Ireland, and penetration has essentially stagnated. What’s particularly striking about the 60% number is that if you removed Dublin from that stat, it’d probably be more like 80%.

Of course, I’m highly skeptical of ye olde surveys, so I’ll have to wait to check out the methodology before I give it my personal stamp of veracity.

Comments: 8 Responses so far

Damien Mulley
November 26th, 2005
2:26 am

I’m slightly sceptical myself, but the survey was of about 10,000 people as part of the regular JNLRs which are taken as gospel by the radio industry. Careers are probably made and ruined on these figures. I believe there’ll be a piece in one of the Sunday papers tomorrow and I’ll update my blog entry accordingly.

The oddness for me too is that 60% have not emailed yet 55% don’t use the net either at home or work. So that means there 5% of those that have gone online that haven’t emailed? Very odd.

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Branedy
November 26th, 2005
3:40 am

There are vast areas outside of the core city centers that will never have access so long as Eircom controls the ‘last mile’ links.

I’m actually suprised that the number is so high.

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Damien Mulley
November 27th, 2005
12:51 pm

Sunday Times article here on it: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-1892745_1,00.html

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Sarah Carey
November 28th, 2005
5:10 am

I’d say 60% is about right. Within our peer group obviously, the internet is as common place as telephone. But out here in the stix, loads of people wouldn’t know the first thing about it. The failure to unbundle the Last Mile is tragic. F****** Eircom and Tony O’Reilly and the workers, took every penny out of the company for themselves and nothing spent on infrastructure.

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Jarrod
November 29th, 2005
3:52 am

It’s not quite a monopoly from what I can see after 4 weeks here - eircom controls the phone lines, yes, but private companies do offer broadband access (cable, DSL and wireless). Although, it does appear to take 3 weeks to get Irish Broadband’s wireless option installed, and one week to get eircom to test your phone line for DSL before the private company can start processing your DSL order…

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Jarrod
December 5th, 2005
8:55 am

Let me update my comments on Irish Broadband - since I can’t find a convenient forum on any Irish site to vent, I’m going to do it here :)

I got my wireless modem today after 3 weeks, only to find that it’s the Ethernet version rather than USB, as I’d ordered. (Yes, I know, what kind of computer doesn’t have an Ethernet port… but that’s not the point.) I called them in the morning: “We’ll get back to you.” I called them at 4pm: “I’ll call you back in 5 minutes.” I doubt I’ll hear from them today.

It’s not even guaranteed that it will work in my area anyway, despite their assurances that it will. So the whole thing may be a futile exercise. Much like this post really, as I doubt anyone will read it :)

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