Three national and international experts spoke
Dr Cole's website says “Cole founded and directs the World Internet Project, a long-term longitudinal look at the effects of computer and Internet technology, which is conducted in over 25 countries. At the announcement of the project in June 1999, Vice President Al Gore praised Cole as a “true visionary providing the public with information on how to understand the impact of media.” Ten years into the project, the World Internet Project, through its unique data on Internet users around the world, is the leading international project examining the ways in which our social, economic and media lives are changing. Cole regularly presents trends and insights of the project to the White House, FCC, Congress, Department of Defense and to governments around the world. On the corporate side, Cole advises Microsoft, WPP (Group M), Ericsson, Sony, Time-Warner, AT&T, AARP and others in their traditional and digital media strategies.”
These statistics from the New Zealand statistician have been collected for some years to form a longitudinal study of Internet use in New Zealand. From their presentation we learned that more than half of New Zealanders are now accessing the Internet via a mobile phone, and that the total number of Internet connections via a mobile phone increased by a third to more than 2.5 million over the past year. Smartphone use is rising quickly, and people are increasingly connecting to the Internet using these devices wherever they go Internet service providers have increased their data caps, so there is also more choice and flexibility when surfing the web on fixed broadband connections. The total number of subscribers with data caps of 50 gigabytes (GB) or more increased by almost 800 percent this year, while those with no data caps increased by more than 270 percent. The average subscriber uses an estimated 16GB of data per month. This is almost double the monthly use this time a year ago. (from their website and cited at the talk)
Dr Cole followed with a discursive and fascinating overview from an international perspective, talking about diverse issues such as how we access the Internet, and provocative statements such as the use of personal computers is shrinking rapidly in favour of smartphones and tablets.He suggested that Internet usage in both the United States and New Zealand was approaching saturation because those who do not use the Internet are doing so by choice. At least one member of the audience disagreed with this and pointed out that he considered that a significant percentage of the population did not have access to the Internet because the cost was too great. This has become important because of the government policy that much government business and access by the public to government will be online. It creates an interesting question as to how such access should be provided for those unable to afford to do so.
For me the fact that someone is taking the trouble to gather the statistics on such use both in New Zealand and internationally is significant. At ICANN we tend to concentrate on our primary role in relation to the domain name system, but of course the bigger picture is access to the Internet, fundamental before we can even worry about whether the domain name system is working. But our role in keeping that address system open and secure and safe is perhaps the next question.