The International Telecommunications Union (“ITU”) has recently published its 2011 Report “Measuring the Information Society“. This looks at two key indicators for information and communication technology (“ICT”) a development index (IDI) and and a price basket (“IPB”).
The purpose of these indices is to capture the level of ICT development in 152 economies worldwide. The IPB combines fixed telephone, mobile cellular and fixed broadband Internet tariffs for 165 economies into one measure – which takes into account average income in each country.
In terms 0f the IDI, the top ten 2010 economies are (in order of their ranks) the Republic of Korea, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong (China), Luxembourg, Switzerland, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom’s position as number 10 in the world remains the same as in 2008.
In terms of the underlying figures, 82.6% of households have a computer (compared to 78% in 2008) and 79.6% have internet (71.1% in 2008).
The UK position in the IPB index is slightly less impressive – number 19 in the world (see Table 3.1).
The most recent Office of National Statistics Statistical Bulletin on “Internet Access – Households and Individuals 2011” continues a number of interesting figures including
- 45 per cent of Internet users used a mobile phone to connect to the Internet
- 77 per cent of households had Internet access.
- in relation to social networking, 91 per cent of 16 to 24 year old Internet users and 18 per cent of Internet users aged 65 or over said that they used social networking sites.
We have previously drawn attention to Gary Hayes’ “Counter” for Social Media use which shows the amount of social media activity taking place at any given moment. This can be found at the bottom of this post. It reveals that this blog post is one of about 900,000 posted in the past day and 330,000,000 in the past year.
We cannot vouch for the accuracy of the Counter but it gives a strong indication – particular to those who do not use social media – of the immensely high levels of activity which are now taking place. Gary Hayes can be found on Twitter, he also has a blog. This is the Counter
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.936961&w=425&h=350&fv=]
more about “Social Media Use – A Counter”, posted with vodpod
These numbers look awesome, I wonder how accurate is Counter?