Brazil: 35.5 million people have no Internet access

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The proportion of Brazilian households with Internet access grew from 2019 to 2021.

According to the survey on the use of Information and Communication Technologies in Brazilian Domiciles (TIC Domicílios) 2021, released on Tuesday, June 21, by the Regional Center for Studies for the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br), on average, the percentage of households able to access the World Wide Web rose from 71% to 82% in the two-year period.

Despite this, the country still has 35.5 million people without Internet access, and the number of households in classes B, C, and D/E with computers fell in the same period.

The positive variation was more significant among homes in rural areas, a segment that grew from 51% in 2019 to 71% in 2021. The proportion of households in urban areas went from 75% to 83% over the same period.

“This proportion increased significantly among households in urban areas compared to the pre-pandemic situation, but the big variation occurred in rural areas, where a growth of 20 percentage points was observed between 2019 and 2021,” highlighted the research coordinator, Fábio Storino.

According to Storino, the results of the data collected in person from October 2021 to March 2022 should be compared to those of 2019 and not to those of 2020, when, due to the pandemic, Cetic.br had to adapt the collection method, interviewing a smaller number of participants heard exclusively by telephone – which increased the margin of error compared to surveys conducted in other years.

As for the quality of service, the TIC Domicílios survey identified that most homes are connected to the network through fiber optics or cable in urban (64%) and rural (39%) areas.

Next comes the mobile network, to which 20% of households in rural areas and 17% of those in urban areas are connected. Almost 99% of users access the Internet through cell phones, while 50%, or 74.5 million of the country’s inhabitants, use the television, which has already surpassed computers (36%).

While 100% of A-class homes have internet access, only 61% of D/E class homes have this service. The proportion among B class homes reaches 98%, and C class homes, 89%.

“Looking at the evolution [of access] by [social] class, there is stability at high levels among the higher classes [A and B], a tendency to increase in class C, and a more pronounced increase among classes D/E,” Storino pointed out, pointing out the growth of 11 percentage points among the poorest, between 2019 and 2021.

“The difference between connectivity in class A and class D/E households, which was 83 percentage points in 2015, fell to 39% in 2021. Although the [social] differences persist and are significant, they have been reducing over time.”

Although smaller, the differences are also felt in regional terms. In the Southeast (84%), South (83%), and Midwest (83%), the proportions of households with Internet access exceed 80%, while in the North, this percentage is 79%, and in the Northeast, 77%.

Compared to 2019, connectivity increased in all five regions. In the period of two years, this indicator varied 13% in the Midwest, 12% in the Northeast, 10% in the South, 9% in the Southeast, and 7% in the North of the country.

INTERNET USER

The survey also points out that the number of users who access the World Wide Web increased 7% from 2019 to 2021, from 74% to 81% of respondents. The increase is associated with the popularization of smartphones not only in Brazil but worldwide.

“When we ask about computer usage, we are talking about desktop [desktops] and portable [notebooks and tablets] computers. Mobile devices, although they are almost a pocket computer, provide more limited use, which does not develop, in users, the same kind of digital skills as the use of multiple devices,” concluded Storino, highlighting that, by 2021, the proportion of users who access the World Wide Web exclusively through cell phones rose from 58% in 2019 to 64% of the population in 2021.

The growth was higher among rural residents, in which the percentage went from 53% to 73%. Among urban dwellers, the increase was from 77% to 82% of those interviewed.

Based on the interviewees’ answers, the researchers estimate that about 139 million Internet users access the web daily or almost daily.

On the other end of the frequency of use, 9.6 million people barely access the Internet, sometimes once a month. “We still have a contingent of 35.5 million aged ten or more who do not use the Internet,” Storino pointed out.

“You can also see significant differences when looking at [the distribution of frequency of use] by social class. While a large part of the population in classes A and B makes daily use of the Internet, as we go to classes C and D/E, both the proportion of less frequent internet use, which is not available [to the same extent] and the proportion of non-users increase,” added Storino.

The survey also evaluates the distribution of internet usage habits by clippings such as gender, color, education level, and age group. For the researchers, one of the highlights of this 17th edition of the survey was the increase in Internet users among the population over 60 years old.

“In 2019, before the pandemic, a third of this population was an internet user. This proportion will increase to 48% in 2021, a relevant contingent,” commented Storino.

With information from Poder360