I have been taking a look at some of the numbers released by Statistics Canada in its Survey of Household Spending to see how Canadians are adopting technology. The 2011 SHS was released a couple weeks ago.
It is encouraging to see that ownership of home computers has increased from 82.7% in 2010 to 84.5% in 2011, meaning that only 1 in 6 households still lacks a computer. It is an improvement, but clearly there is much more work to be done.
In the meantime, household internet connectivity has increased even more: from 78.4% in 2010 to 80.5% in 2011. That means we have gone from connecting 94.8% of households with a computer to 95.27% in 2011.
I found it interesting to see how Canadians are connecting. High speed telephone company connections feed 30.4% of Canadian households, a decrease from 31.9% the year before. Cable has increased its share, from 34.2% to 35.4%. Interestingly, wireless connections are now found in 8.1% of households, up from 5.3% the year before, while “other internet connections” have climbed from 1.3% to 1.5%. Dial-up still serves 5.2%, down from 5.7%.
Wireless internet connections are climbing in prevalence in serving Canadian households. This will certainly add pressure to the types of service packages being offered and the download tiers being offered, while adding to demands on network capacities. We’ll be looking at some of these issues in a panel called “Unplugged: The Next Generation of Wireless” on Wednesday, June 5 at The 2013 Canadian Telecom Summit.