While I’ve done infographics on the Internet situation in Azerbaijan before (and with a gender layer here), this is slightly newer data and there are a ton of interesting new questions that I’ll try to address in the coming weeks.
Kazakhstan ready to contribute to peaceful resolution of Karabakh conflict
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Saturday, June 9, 2012
Text of report by Russian internet news agency Regnum, specializing in regional reporting
The Speaker of the parliament of Azerbaijan , Oqtay Asadov, met a delegation headed by the Speaker of the Senate of the Kazakh parliament, Kayrat Mami, on 8 June.
The press service of the parliament of Azerbaijan reports that during the meeting, Asadov said that the peoples of both countries, united by ancient roots, common cultural and spiritual values, had high hopes for the development of relations.
” Azerbaijan , a rapidly growing country in the South Caucasus today, intends to expand economic, cultural and humanitarian cooperation with Kazakhstan,” he said.
Asadov also said that the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, which was the most painful problem of Azerbaijan , was a great obstacle to the full development of the region.
“We are in favour of a fair solution to the problem within the framework of international law. We believe that with the support of the international community, including Kazakhstan, the issue will soon find its just solution,” he said.
Kayrat Mami emphasized that Azerbaijan was Kazakhstan’s most important partner in the Caspian region. He said Kazakhstan was ready to give all possible assistance for the speedy and peaceful resolution of the Nagornyy-Karabakh conflict.
Original Language: Russian
Section: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan
Index Terms: KAZAKH ; AZERI ; KAZAKHSTAN AZERBAIJAN ARMENIA ; RUSSIA ; DOMESTIC POLITICAL ; INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL
Original Source: Regnum news agency, Moscow
Record Number: 13F4CC15EF7B74E0
Source: Regnum news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0001 gmt 9 Jun 12/BBC Monitoring
I stumbled across this article from Trend News out of Azerbaijan (I can’t link because it is from an academic news search service). I’m going to take this apart line by line. Blue is the original, my text is red.
Trend News Agency, Baku, Azerbaijan
April 7, 2012 Saturday
Internet penetration level among home users in Azerbaijan hits 69 percent
BYLINE: H. Valiyev, Trend News Agency, Baku, Azerbaijan
April 07–Internet penetration level among home users in Azerbaijan is 69 percent, the analysis on the current state of information technologies in the country conducted by the Azerbaijan Marketing Association said.
What is a home user? Do they mean how many households in Azerbaijan have an Internet connection?
According to my analysis of CRRC data, only 11% of households have a PC with Internet and another 5% have mobile Internet – so sort of home Internet.
According to the association, about 73 percent of households in Baku have at least one user of the global network. This index by regions hits 59 percent.
Again, according to my analysis, this is just not true. 27% of Baku households have some sort of Internet. 15% of regional cities and 7% of village households have some sort of Internet.
Even if they meant a user – someone that has ever used the Internet, only 26% of all Azerbaijanis have ever used according to the CRRC.
Dial-up share in the republic is 23 percent. About 16 percent of Internet users of the capital and 28 percent of the population in the regions have the access to the Internet via this technology.
This I do believe. It is possible that 23% of Internet users are on dial-up. I don’t have this data from Azerbaijan, but in neighboring Armenia dial-up users are about 14% of all Internet users, so it is possible.
ADSL broadband market share is 42 percent. This type of connection in the capital market is 44 percent, the regional market — 39 percent.
This is possible. 11% of all Azerbaijanis use a PC to get online, so it is feasible that 42% of those users are on ADSL.
The share of users having access to the Internet via mobile phones (3G technology) is 20 percent in the republic (in Baku — 20 percent, the regions — 21 percent).
This is possibly close to the truth. 5% of Azerbaijanis have mobile Internet only and another 5% have both mobile and PC Internet. 16% of people in Baku have mobile Internet of some sort.
About 16 percent of the population get access to the Internet via other types of wireless access. The share of the capital market on this index is 19 percent, regional market — 9 percent.
Not sure on this one.
The satisfaction of end-user with Internet service provider’s services is insufficient. Such factors as reliability of service, technical support, access speed and quality of services were evaluated on a five point scale. The evaluation of the respondents was 3.8 points for all these criteria. Only the cost of providers’ services was estimated at 3.9 points.
This isn’t written (or translated?) very well, but I imagine it could be true.
Despite the relatively high customer satisfaction with Internet providers’ services, about 23 percent of consumers are willing to change the provider of Internet services, and only 15 percent are loyal to their provider.
Four percent of respondents are willing to change Internet service provider. About 19 percent of users also consider this opportunity. There is no difference for 30 percent of users where they get access to the Internet, 26 percent of respondents faced the difficulty with a choice, 15 percent are loyal, and only 7 percent are not prepared to choose Internet provider.
Okay, whatever.
The vast majority of respondents (65 percent) have access to the Internet at home, 25 percent — at work, 28 percent — in the Internet clubs, 36 percent — in any place (via mobile phones), 8 percent — at schools.
Here’s my analysis of CRRC data – this is just of Internet users, mind you. Their numbers sort of match up with these but sort of don’t.
| At home from my computer / laptop | 38% |
| At work | 18% |
| From my friends’ computer / laptop | 8% |
| From my cell phone | 10% |
| In Internet cafes | 23% |
About 51 percent use the Internet daily, 38 percent — several times a week, five percent — once a week, four percent — more than once per month, one percent falls to users having access to the Internet once a month, one percent — once in three months.
Here’s my analysis of the CRRC data on this, which doesn’t really match up does it?:
| Never | 62.20% |
| Less than monthly | 6.3 |
| Monthly | 2.5 |
| Weekly | 5.9 |
| Daily | 6.7 |
About 63 percent use the Internet to download multimedia content (music, video, internet radio), 52 percent — send and receive e-mail, 40 percent — receive information about products and services, 39 percent — online-games, 21 percent — telephone calls, 19 percent — receive information from the electronic media (to download e-books), and 18 percent — to download the software.
I don’t have these exact activities, but here’s what I do have – and again, this is JUST Internet users. Doesn’t match up with their stuff:
| Search info | 58% |
| 38% | |
| 35% | |
| Music/video | 27% |
| News | 24% |
| Other SNS | 19% |
| Games | 15% |
| Skype | 10% |
| Dating sites | 9% |
| Forums | 7% |
| Shop | 3% |
| Read/write blog | 2% |
| Bank | 2% |
The vast majority of users of desktop and laptop computers pays special attention to the protection of personal data. Antivirus solutions are installed in 94 percent of desktop computers (in Baku — 94 percent, in the regions — 96 percent) and in 93 percent of laptops (in Baku — 92 percent, in the regions — 96 percent).
I don’t have anything on this.
So, my assessment? This marketing firm probably did not engage in the proper sampling techniques to make inferences about the Azerbaijani population (like CRRC does) and also probably lied about the Internet rate — maybe to generate more business? Maybe because they were paid to?
What do I say?
ETA: here’s another similar crazy news story
Internet penetration rate in Azerbaijan double world average (PHOTO)
SECTION: TELECOMMUNICATIONS
LENGTH: 201 words
Azerbaijan, Baku, April 6 / Trend H.Veliyev /
The Azerbaijan Marketing Association has presented on Friday the results of research into IT in Azerbaijan. The results were presented on Friday by Rahim Huseynov, the chairman of the association.
The association conducted a study of reforms implemented in recent years.
Studies have shown that in 2011, 56 percent of Azerbaijan’s population has at least one personal computer. On average, there are 22 computers for every 100 people.
The rate of Internet penetration, according to the association, was 68 percent, or double the world average.
As noted at the presentation, according to the World Economic Forum, Azerbaijan’s rating has improved by nine points and the country ranked 61 among 142 countries.
The event also provided an overview of the ICT market of the CIS countries over the past five years.
Some 5,868 respondents participated in the social survey on the rate of use of ICT in Azerbaijan, conducted by the Association of Marketing.
“During the survey, we were primarily interested in the use and attitudes to ICT,” Huseynov said.
The association believes the results will help the business sector take appropriate steps and build their investment policy.
Images from my #ictd2012 poster, plus some updates on April 1.
Some fun bits:
– 37% of Armenians have used the Internet — that’s some major growth, as you can see on slide 2.
– And Armenians are using the Internet more often. 22% of Armenians are online daily and 8% are online weekly. Big increases from the past few years.
– Those that are NOT online are more likely to be rural, poorer, less educated, and older — but when they were asked, most said that they didn’t get online because they don’t have a computer, followed by a lack of interest or need.
– From the original post I have the PC, mobile, and home Internet connection data from the Caucasus Barometer, the ITU, and Gallup. Based on methodology, I give the most weight to the Caucasus Barometer, but I figured that it’d be interesting to see how the three measure up.
In the next few days I’ll post online activities and some demographic breakdowns. As always, if you have questions, I’m happy to do some analysis for you. And, please link back to this post and/or give the proper attribution if you use these stats. This is the result of many hours of analysis and I appreciate your respect for my intellectual labor and property.
Armenia ICT Adoption by Katy Pearce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.katypearce.net.
I’m at the #ictd2012 conference right now and I’ve been asked about Armenian Internet use. Business Internet use is actually quite low, especially compared to household use. This surprises a lot of people.
So I did a quick analysis to find out where Armenians get online most often. (This is rough 2011 Caucasus Barometer — will revise if different in the final version.) And this is of ALL Armenians.
19% of all Armenians get online at home.
3% on a friend’s computer.
2% at work.
2% via the mobile.
1% at an Internet cafe.
More from the ArMedia dataset…
With so many Armenians on social networking sites (85% of mobile Internet users, 83% of Armenians that have both mobile and PC-based Internet, and 54% of PC-based Internet users in Armenia, as of a year ago), what are they doing on there?
Mostly communicating with friends! While only a little bit more than a third (37%) of Armenians that access social networking sites via a computer say that they communicate with friends, three-quarters of mobile Internet SNS users and 83% of those with both mobile and PC Internet and use SNSs say they’re communicating with pals.
Some use messaging to communicate with friends (27% of PC SNS users, 23% of mobile SNS users, and 19% that have both mobile and PC for SNS access).
Those PC SNS users are busy with something else — they’re sharing information (well, 37% of them are), but compared to only 13% of those with both and 17% of those with mobile for SNS access, this is a lot!
Those PC users are givers, not takers — they are busy sharing information, but they’re not really seeking information. Only 8% of PC SNS users are seeking information on social networking sites, while a quarter of mobile users and those with both PC and mobile for SNS access do.
What about new people? In my qualitative work I’ve heard a lot about Armenians trying to meet dating partners on social networking sites – and maybe this is the case in this data as well. A quarter to a third of Armenian SNS users are trying to meet new people on social networking sites.
Games are a bit popular too, especially with mobile users — a third of those with both PC and mobile and a quarter of mobile-only SNS users play games. Only 18% of PC SNS users do though.
Photos, videos, and music are posted by 17-27% of SNS users too.
** If anyone is interested, I can do a Facebook versus Odnoklassniki breakdown. **
New data is coming soon (hoorah!), but this gives a pretty good snapshot of Armenian social network site use in January-February 2011.
With all of the activity in Kazakhstan right now, I wanted to pull some findings from a conference paper/ article in submission about Central Asian Internet. (I can’t post the entire paper while it is still in submission – sorry!) If you have questions or are interested in more detailed analysis, contact me and I’d be happy to do what I can.
Here’s Kazakh Internet penetration according to the ITU (which frequent readers know I’m not a fan of because it uses the telecom companies’ information to determine adoption):
| Internet Adopters (% of population that have ever used) (ITU Development Index, 2011) | |
|
2004 |
2.65% |
|
2005 |
2.96% |
|
2006 |
3.27% |
|
2007 |
4.02% |
|
2008 |
11.00% |
|
2009 |
18.20% |
|
2010 |
34.00% |
And here’s the data from the paper, national, from spring 2011:
| Aware of Internet |
80% |
| Of total, Adopted Internet |
50% |
| Of total, Use Internet |
|
|
Never |
66% |
|
Less than monthly |
2% |
|
Monthly |
3% |
|
Weekly |
10% |
|
Daily |
19% |
In all of my work I emphasize the importance of ‘frequent use’ as a more salient category of Internet use than ‘ever’ used.
FINDINGS:
In our paper, we model antecedents to Internet awareness, adoption (ever used), and frequent use.
In Kazakhstan, the strongest determinants (in order from strongest) of AWARENESS that the Internet exists were: age, urbanness, education, and economic wellbeing (although economic wellbeing wasn’t strong – statistically significant, but not as strong as the others). (This model explained 13% of the variance in awareness.)
In plain English this means that younger people, more urban people, those with more education, and those with more wealth are more likely to be in the 80% that know what the Internet is.
The strongest determinants (in order from strongest) of ADOPTION (ever having used) were age, economic wellbeing, urbanness, and education. (And this model was set up to control for the effect of these variables on awareness first…) (This model explained 33% of the variance in Internet adoption.)
In plain English this means that younger people, wealthier people, more urban people, and those with more education are more likely to be in the 50% that have ever used the Internet.
The strongest determinants (in order from strongest) of FREQUENT USE were age, urbannesses, and education. Economic wellbeing wasn’t a significant factor, but I’d imagine that the economic barrier exists more at the ‘ever used’ stage and once you’ve gotten over that, frequent use isn’t as much of a cost issue. (This model explained (a whopping!) 49% of the variance in use. (This is really high.))
In plain English this means that younger people, more urban people, and those with more education are more likely to be in the 29% that use the Internet frequently (at least weekly).
So what are Kazakhs doing online?
Of those that are online at least weekly, 85% do email, 77% read news (as a side note, this is quite high compared to what I’ve found in my work in the rest of Central Asia and the Caucasus), 73% are on social networking sites (this is normal compared to the Caucasus) (47% on Odnoklassniki, 43% on vKontake, 14% on Facebook, 7% on Twitter), ~40% interact with blogs (this is very high compared to the rest of Central Asia and the Caucasus), and 23% watch YouTube.
Access points vary. 2/3rd get online via the own PC, most at home (60% of frequent users). Public places are less common that home — 44% at work, 33% at school, 33% at a cafe on a public computer, 35% at a cafe with their own laptop. Mobile Internet is used by 55% of frequent users.
For what it is worth, the Kazakhstan Internet landscape is very different from the rest of Central Asia and the Caucasus — demographically and in the activities engaged in.
Based on data from the Armenian Media landscape report, here are the regional breakdowns of means of accessing the Internet in Armenia (in early 2011).
You can see that for the country as a whole, most Internet users are personal computer based – although mobile is not insignificant. In the capital, PC dominates, but for rural users, mobile is catching up to PC. And those mobile users are often NEW users.
In an upcoming study we discuss how much the way people access the Internet influences what they actually do once they’re online as well as the demographic differences between those that use a PC and those that use a mobile phone as their primary Internet access device.
This is the entire country.
This is Yerevan.
This is regional cities.
This is rural areas.
(All images by Janine Slaker)
| OF ALL ARMENIAN INTERNET USERS |
Total |
Yerevan |
Regional city |
Rural |
| N = 420 |
N = 215 |
N = 145 |
N = 60 |
|
| Mobile Internet access |
15% |
10% |
19% |
28% |
| PC-based Internet access |
71% |
73% |
77% |
62% |
|
Both mobile and |
11% |
17% |
4% |
10% |
| OF ALL ARMENIANS |
Total |
Yerevan |
Regional city |
Rural |
| N = 1420 |
N = 504 |
N = 443 |
N = 473 |
|
| No Internet access | 70% |
57% |
67% |
87% |
| Mobile Internet access |
5% |
4% |
6% |
4% |
| PC-based Internet access |
22% |
31% |
25% |
8% |
|
Both mobile and |
3% |
7% |
1% |
1% |