Nearly nine out of 10 households in Cyprus had Internet access according to a survey carried out by Cystat and published on its website on Thursday.
This show that in 2019  Ιnternet access in households increased and reached 89.6% compared to 86.2% in 2018.
According to the survey, 85.5% of persons aged 16-74 years old use the internet at least once a week. Among people aged 16-24 the figure was 100%. This percentage decreases with age, even though for individuals aged 65–74 years old the use of internet increased to 44.3% in 2019 compared to 37.5% in 2018.
Persons with high educational level (97.3%) use the internet more frequently than persons with low educational level (55.7%).
What is the Internet used for?
The most popular Internet activities are: use of instant messaging (88.6%), telephone calls over the internet/video calls (via webcam) over the Internet (84.0%), participation in social networks (83.3%), search of information about goods and services (83.2%) and reading news/ newspapers/magazines (81.9%).
91.6% of persons that used the Internet in the first quarter of 2019, used their mobile or smart phone to access the Internet away from home or work, 26.1% used a laptop and 19.6% used a tablet.
e-Government
Compared to 2018, the percentage of persons who use the Internet for interaction with public authorities in 2019 increased from 41.7% to 50.3%. This is due to the increase of people using the Internet for obtaining information from public authorities’ websites (from 38.7% to 48.3%), downloading official forms (from 27.4% to 37.1%) and submitting completed forms (from 26.1% to
33.9%).
e-Commerce
The percentage of individuals 16-74 years old making online orders during the first quarter of the year significantly increased to 36.2% in 2019 compared to 23.3% in 2018.
The most popular categories of goods/services ordered online were the following: clothes or sports goods (66.2%), travel arrangements such as transport tickets, car hire etc. (54.6%) and holiday accommodation (51.7%).
During the period April 2018-March 2019, 84.6% of persons aged 16-74 years old that bought or ordered goods and services for private use bought from sellers from EU countries, 44.2% bought from sellers from the rest of the world and 45.1% bought from sellers in Cyprus. 38.9% of these persons bought goods or services of value between 100-500 euro.
The survey was conducted during the period April – August 2019 and covered 1,824 households with at least one member aged 16 – 74 (inclusive) and 3,860 individuals aged 16 – 74 (inclusive).
The aim was to collect data on the access of households to selected Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), the use of Internet, use of e-Government, e-Commerce, e-Skills, and Internet Security.
The survey covers all the government controlled areas of the Republic of Cyprus
