It's no mystery: Italy, especially when compared to its European partners, is a country with little digitization. And we have unfortunately seen it in these difficult months of lockdown, with agile work that has not really been so agile for everyone and above all with school courses that have necessarily had to continue remotely. The beginning was chaotic, then thanks to some resources allocated by the Government and the good will of teachers and families, somehow it was done. But if the coronavirus really changes the way of teaching for a long time, how ready will Italy be? One of the most inflated themes is that of the digital divide between North and South, but this is only partially true: this is demonstrated by the map that we report within this text, which has Unesco and Agcom as its sources.
However, let's start from the national data: in the index of digitization of the economy and society (Desi) Italy is in 24th place out of 28 European countries. In 2019, Istat declared that 23,9% of Italian families, practically one in four, do not have access to the Internet. To deal with this, the education ministry said on March 19 that it had distributed 46.152 tablets across the country, and a week later €70 million was set aside to allow schools to buy the devices and get them to anyone. it doesn't have them. But is it true that in this adaptation to smart learning, or distance learning, the South is clearly disadvantaged? Not really, at least according to official data.
The map shows the percentage of families, province by province, who have an internet connection at home of at least 30 megabits per second (therefore much faster than an ADSL but less than the maximum potential of fiber optics, which can reach one gigabit per second): of the 48 provinces where this percentage is between 65 and 100% (none reaches 100, of course), half, i.e. 24, are from Rome (including) down. Not only: Apulia, Calabria and Sicily are entirely covered by fast connection, with the exception of the province of Messina. In Bari 92% of homes have a latest generation network, in Palermo 83%, in Naples 89%, in Syracuse 90%. Cagliari also did well with 78%, Reggio Calabria with 72% and the capital itself with 85%.
All these provinces do better than various areas in the North: excluding Milan and some provinces of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Liguria, the figure for Turin, for example, is high but disappointing (75%), while Veneto, Trentino-Alto-Adige literally struggle and Friuli Venezia Giulia, where only 83% of Trieste stands out. Vicenza makes up 51%, Belluno 36%, Trento 37%, Bolzano 44%. Low coverage also for Val'Aosta (37%), the province of Cuneo (38%). The lowest figures, however, are recorded in some areas of central-southern Italy: the worst is the province of Isernia with 31%, then Rieti with 33% and L'Aquila with 34%. In short the problem of poorly connected Italy is real, but it is much more homogeneous than it might seem: the South, even in the most remote provinces, has recovered a lot of ground.
