Italians always on their cell phones, Italians with double (or triple) cell phones, Italians always tinkering – perhaps on Facebook – with their cell phones. In this, the Italians are the best in Europe, and to say it is not a sensation or the cliché but a research of the Guarantee Authority in Communications. Italy is in fact the country with the largest number of mobile phones and the greatest diffusion of devices suitable for receiving and transmitting data on the move, whether they are smartphones, ipads, or USB sticks.
In Italy, 48% of users surf the net from a portable device, against an average of 39% for countries in the euro area. “Today mobile is worth more than landline”, said the guarantor Corrado Calabrò, in drawing up the balance sheet of his mandate which has come to an end. "The number of fixed lines (data in which Italy is instead below the EU average) has doubled in the last seven years, that of mobile lines has grown 16 times", revealed Calabrò.
In addition to the habits of citizens, this figure also had obvious economic implications: “The weight of the telecommunications sector on GDP is today 2,7%“, explained the outgoing president again, “and continues to grow by 6% per year despite the years of recession”.
However this thriving market, which in seven years it has seen internet users grow from 2 to 27 million in Italy, still seems too oriented towards personal use of the iPhone on duty. Checking e-mails, chatting, fiddling with applications and social networks: these still seem to be the favorite habits of Italians, so much so that they are last in Europe, for example, for purchases and online commerce.
Just as Italy is bringing up the rear for exports through ICT e only 4% of SMEs – that is the backbone of our productive fabric – sell online, while the EU-27 average is 12%. Calabrò leaves the presidency of the Communications Authority with this warning: "the problem of the new generation networks, even for the fixed network, can no longer be postponed".
