Fewer than one in 20 late adopters — less than one year online — have used the Internet from a public access site.

Location of Usage by Length of Time Online


“I wanted to start using it (the Internet) more, so I just bought a computer for home. I need one at home because it is really hard to use the Internet at school because they are always being used.”
      (Winnipeg, new user)

“I was able to buy a computer with payroll deduction program at work. Having a computer at home made me more interested in getting to learn the computer. By having it at home I was able to learn and practice and look at things I was curious about like genealogy.”
      (Winnipeg, new user)

“I never used it until I really had to at work. Now I don’t know what I would do without it.”
      (Winnipeg, new user)

“New user” focus group participants indicated that while they wanted to begin using the Internet, many of them did not become users until they were able to obtain home Internet access. A very limited number indicated that their late adoption of the technology was a result of obtaining workplace access. Few indicated that access from a public location played a role in their recent adoption of the Internet.

These qualitative finding are supported by quantitative data. A large majority of late adopters, who have begun using the Internet in the past year, have used the Internet at home in the past three months. At the same time, significantly fewer late adopters have used the Internet at work than those with more than four years of experience online. Late adopters are also no more or less likely to have used the Internet from what they would describe as a public access site than those with six or more years of experience using the Internet [Table 5e].

  • 79 per cent of late adopters, with less than one year of experience online, have used the Internet from home in the past three months.
  • A narrow 14 per cent of these same late adopters have used the Internet at work over the same time period.
  • By contrast, over 40 per cent of those with at least four years of experience have used the Internet at work recently.
  • 12 per cent of those with less than a year of experience online used the Internet at the residence of a friend or relative.
  • Fewer than one in 20 late adopter Internet users (4 per cent) have used the Internet from a public access site.