Internet | Survey reveals increase in broadband penetration

The number of local households using the Internet in 2017 increased by 1,200 year-on-year to 168,800, accounting for 88.1 percent of all households.

According to a survey on information technology usage conducted in the fourth quarter of 2017 and released yesterday by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), households using fiber optic broadband connections kept rising, up by 35.7 percent year-on-year to 105,700.

This made up 62.6 percent of all households using the Internet, and thus led to a 30.8 percent decline in the number of households using fixed broadband connections (49,300).

Internet users aged 3 and above totaled 513,600, up by 2.7 percent year-on-year. The Internet penetration rate for members of the population aged 35 to 44 and 25 to 34 reached 97.6 percent and 97.4 percent, respectively, sixty percent of the population aged 55 and above used the Internet, an increase of 9.8 percentage points. Regarding the frequency of Internet use, 94.4 percent of Internet users reported daily use, up by 5.6 percentage points year-on-year.

Most of those surveyed reported that they use the Internet for communication (93.7 percent) and online entertainment (81.4 percent) purposes, up by 2.2 and 4.8 percentage points respectively year-on-year.

Regarding e-commerce, online shoppers rose by 16 percent to 87,900. Median spending on online shopping in the fourth quarter of 2017 held steady year-on-year at MOP1,000, of which median spending on Travel Services increased by 15 percent to MOP5,750.

90 percent have mobile phone

MOBILE PHONE users edged down by 0.1 percent year-on-year to 561,000; mobile phone penetration rate was 90.9 percent, down by 0.8 percentage points. The proportion of Internet users using a mobile phone to access the Internet (91.5 percent) decreased by 0.4 percentage points year-on-year. The proportion of households with computer equipment fell by 2.1 percentage points year-on-year to 75.8 percent (145,100 households), which DSEC attributes to “the greater variety of functions available on mobile phones and other devices.”