CEFRIO, a Québec research center, announced the results of a poll (en francais), made with Léger Marketing. Key facts:
- 72% of adults use Internet regularly
- 86% are subscribed to High Speed Internet service
- 16% of families use IP telephony
- 38% use online banking services
- 47% use Internet at their office for work
- and 31% of adults use Internet at home for work (!)
- 20% say they have alread read a blog
Those are great news and proves that technology is becoming a standard in Québec.
However, what the press release doesn’t show well is that those are 2006 results. I would also take those results with a grain of salt. You can’t mix people who live in Montréal with the ones living in, for instance, Northern Quebec. The Hérouxville incident proved us so well that there are many Québecs inside Québec. For someone who lives in the Plateau or in downtown Montréal, asking him/her if he already used the Internet is really trivial.
Also, when 20% say that they have already read a blog, does that mean she/he stumbled upon one? or does that mean he is a regular reader? if 31% of adults use Internet at home for work, does that mean he used it once to send an email to a colleage, or does that mean he regularly types reports and works on spreadsheets at home?
