UsageWatch.org

The SpreadFirefox counter has reached 7.6 M browser downloads today. I'm glad that the apparent slowing down adoption trend I wrote about two days ago was a false alarm, possibly, as I suggested, related to Thanksgiving Day.

One million more downloads took place in the past two days what represents even an acceleration. However, some people may have postponed switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox to after Thanksgiving Day. The next few days will tell us whether adoption is indeed accelerating.

In It's almost as good as being there, Kathy Boccella tells a nice story of family telepresence. Grandmother lives in Philadelphia. Daughter and grandchildren live in New Mexico. And grandmother shares their everyday life events through her daughter's blog's stories and images.

If you want to know what Lazarus, 2, got on his birthday or how Maggie, 7 months, reacted to her first haircut, it's all documented, along with lots of heartfelt outpourings from Mom

Telling about her experience, Grandmother says

it has made a huge difference for me. I don't want to just call up all the time, so I'll look in on the blog and see what's happening. I feel like I'm participating in their lives

And from Mother's viewpoint, the blog is also a vehicle of self-expression and community participation

I was late to the game, 36, when I had my first child. It really changes your perspective a lot. I knew it would, but I didn't know how much it would. This is sort of a personal outlet

Keeping a personal diary and creating family presence aren't the only motivations for publishing a baby blog. Daddyzine is more of a writing exploration babyblog: a father who cares for a 2-and-a-half daughter writes about his emotions and feelings. Trixieupdate is a extreme form of a baby book where a father logs bottle counts, diaper changes and hours slept by his 15 months daughter.

I wonder, if blogs had been available in the 1930s, would child psychologists Jean Piaget have blogged on his children development?

An insight into how Telecommunications and Internet work in military-ruled Myanmar comes from Communication facilities lacking in Myanmar:

Internet was limited to big cities and was under strict government control. No one could access free e-mail sites and tourists had to get a new ID from the state-owned service provider at a cost of $8 if they had to send mail.

And a reminder that information doesn't circulate freely always and everywhere:

Journalists, who managed to send stories from Mandalay, the country's second largest city, had to allow authorities to go through their stories and one of the Indian scribes was even asked to write in English and not in Hindi before the fax could be sent.

I was trying to put together some sort of unified view of Broadband Internet adoption in Europe, along the same lines of what I just did for the US, when I read Elizabeth Lloyd's enthusiastic article on Hong Kong's Digital Potential and turned my attention to Asia-Pacific instead.

There is a second reason to that. I'm having a lot of trouble with gathering statistics on the European Information Society. Contrary to the US, little of this information is available online. Few reports can be downloaded for free. Most of them have to be ordered, sometimes only by fax; have to be paid for in advance with no preview available. A good example is the process designed to order EITO's European Information Technology Observatory 2004. It is enraging!

Hong Kong
Hong Kong has a total population of 6.8 M people. Nielsen//Netratings indicates that they are 4.9 M to use the Internet, that is almost three out of four Hong Kong residents (72.5%). In the summer 2003, 66% of Hong Kong households had a Broadband connection.

Since 2000, when Internet users were 2.3 M, adoption rate has been very high to 113,7%. Elizabeth Lloyd invokes Hong Kong's early embracing of the Internet in 1991, high-living standards, relatively low access prices, good infrastructure, in terms of both PC penetration and broadband offer. ITU places Hong Kong world second behind the Republic of Korea in Broadband Internet; and world third for second-generation mobile penetration.   

Asia Pacific
Looking at the Asia-Pacific region more broadly, the ITU Asia-pacific Telecommunication Indicators 2004 report indicates a 38% increase in the number of Internet users from 2000 to 2003, for a total Internet population of 255 M. Broadband penetration is also very high, four of the top ten broadband-connected countries are in the region: the Republic of Korea (23.3%), Hong Kong (18%), Taiwan (13.4) and Japan (11.7%). Singapore is very close also with a penetration rate of 10.1%.
Among the factors invoked to explain strong adoption are:

• a favourable regulatory environment
• the emergence of regional equipment manufacturers
• urban demographics

Quoting the lead author of the report, Eric Nelson

The role of governments has also been critical in helping the rollout of broadband. Governments have taken steps such as becoming pre-eminent adopters of the technology themselves, stimulated the development of adequate national backbone networks, created incentives for the establishment of competition, interacted closely with the private sector and given subsidies and other incentives to extend coverage into rural areas to reach new groups.

Nevertheless, let's not forget that within the region very large disparities exist between the developed urban and the less developed areas.

Another perspective on the uptake of VoIP is provided by ISP-Planet's US VoIP ranking by subscriber: Q3 2004; even though I find the concept of a subscriber to a free service problematic: I tend to associate subscription with a fee and registration with free.

The article collates the October-November 2004 number of subscribers (with date and source) for eight VoIP service providers that make this information public: Skype (12.9 M), VoiceGlo (1.8 M), CallWave (823 k), Vonage (300 k), CableVision (189k), Charter (40k), 8x8 (28k), Net2Phone (7k). The total number of reported VoIP subscribers is about 16 M. Overall this number is conservative as there are still many providers which do not make their data public and many non-US providers that are not included in the statistics.

The article also refers back to a Broadband Reports VoIP market analysis that indicates an average monthly fee of 20$ or less; and offers an overview of newcomers' strategies to enter the VoIP market.

In a previous post, I reviewed research on Broadband adoption in the US to arrive at an overall understanding of the Internet adoption situation as of end 2004.

Some explanations of this situation are offered in Michael Powell: Broadband suffers from Innovator's dilemma, an interview of FCC Chairman with Larry Lessig.

Three factors are invoked to explain comparatively weak US Broadband adoption (in 2000, N°1/2 in broadband penetration; in 2004, n° 13):

1. legacy, prior success in dial-up Internet access has made the switch to broadband more difficult
2. geography, the way the Amercan territory is configured and inhabited makes wiring everybody extremely hard
3. multi-provider, the US are experimenting with a multiplicity of Broadband delivery technologies: DSL, cable, wireless, WiMax, Satellite; and operators

Is Broadband adoption rate the main issue though? Both the Pew Internet Project and the Online Nation Report show that the number of households with no form of Internet connection is still pretty high and, among dial-up households, many are those that say they are just not interested in upgrading.  Availability of Broadband acces may serve those who are already part of the Information Society. But may not be the key to engage more people into the Information Society.

I'm worried. I've been monitoring the downloads counter at SpreadFirefox and, though the number of Firefow downloads is increasing nicely, it seems to be doing so at a gradually slower pace. In four days (Nov 19 to Nov 23) Firefox was downloaded 1 M times ; it took six days to add another 1 M downloads (Nov 23 to Nov 29). Thanksgiving Day may explain this in part.  But what I'm most worried about is the difficulty with crossing the chasm.