The share of Bulgarian firms with Internet access has reached 87.4%, showed data from the National Statistics Institute (NSI) monitoring the progress of the so-called information society among firms in 2012. The figure is up 0.5% from the previous year. The type and speed of Internet connections has marked a significant improvement – 76.2% of businesses in the country use fixed broadband Internet, which is 7.7% more than in 2011. Almost half of the enterprises (48.8%) support their own website, NSI found.
Information technologies are used mainly in big companies (with more than 250 employees), 98.3% of which have Internet access, with the share dropping to 85.7% among small firms (with 10-49 employees). In 2012, one in four workers (26.7%) used a computer at least once a week to perform their work responsibilities, and 22.5% of the workforce has been provided with Internet access, which is an increase of 0.9% and 1.1%, respectively, compared to 2011.
The share of consumers shopping online is growing twice as fast as the number of people who choose to contact the government administration via the Internet, showed the latest NSI survey of Internet coverage in 2012. The number of people seeking administrative services on the web has risen 1.2% in a year. In 25% of the cases it’s about citizens looking for information on the institutions’ online pages, 13.2% downloaded document forms and 11.3% filled the forms online.
The growth rate among the number of online shoppers is 2.5% higher. In the last 12 months one in ten people between the age of 16 and 74 made a purchase on the Internet. The most sought after items are clothes and shoes (63.6%), followed by orders connected to trips and hotel reservations (31.3%) and purchases of books, magazines, newspapers and digital studying materials (25.9%).
More than half of the households in Bulgaria (50.9%) have Internet access, with almost all of them (50.8%) using broadband, statistics showed. The number of homes with Internet access rose 5.9% in a year, while broadband users increased by 11%.
Compared to 2008, the number of families with Internet access doubled, while the use of broadband connections jumped 30%. The Southwest region, including the capital Sofia, has the biggest share of households with Internet (nearly 60%). The Northwest region has the lowest Internet coverage (38.2%). The number of regular Internet users rose 3.9% in a year to reach more than half of the population between the age of 16 and 74.
Source: www.klassa.bg
(14.12.2012)