electronrun.com

Greece is the 14th richest country in the EU. In a place with almost 100% mobile telephony penetration, one would expect the internet penetration statistics to be very good. Unfortunately, the news coming from the Observatory for the Greek Information Society is very disheartening. Here is some shocking numbers. Only 27.4% of Greek homes have internet access. And even more significantly, only 21.7% of those make use of the internet weekly. What this means is that a shockingly low 6% of Greek homes uses the internet weekly! And bearing in mind that not everybody in a home is a user it is simple to understand that the pinnacle of the modern economy is not taken incredibly seriously. The average numbers for the EU are 51%, 47% and 24% respectively, not good enough, but a totally different picture to the Greek figures…

So what is going wrong? We have recently written about the troubles of Greek broadband users. The difficulty to get really fast access is an important parameter, as we all know that speed on its own is a critical parameter that makes the internet a worthwhile experience. This is however not enough to explain the low internet penetration numbers, given that there is still a lot of slow modem users. There are additional parameters that are very important:

1. Private users in Greece are in their majority not very demanding. Web 2.0 use has spread in the younger ages but most Greeks use the internet pathetically to just read news.
2. Greek businesses have been extremely slow to adopt new technology. Intranets and prompt electronic communication is mainly limited to banks, multinationals and a number of Greek companies that mainly do a lot of export or are active in tourism. The vast majority of Greek businesses, and we mean more that 95%, have between 1 and 5 employees and hardly use email.
3. Overstaffing of the Greek state sector and the very low skill level of state employees are tremendous barriers to the introduction of new tech. Greek bureaucracy is notorious for being the sole reason that foreign investment levels are consistently low. If this changed, citizens would get a quicker and better service without the need to be physically present in different state offices on a frequent basis and it would be a good incentive for individuals to dive in the new technologies.

There are many excuses flying around. A typical one is the high VAT of 19%. It would definitely be nice to have lower VAT for new technologies but the sad truth is that prices of computers and connections are very reasonable and it is only a question of priorities. Greek content on the internet is not the richest in the world but nothing is going to change if users do not increase and do not become more active. Eventually, in the Greek case it all boils down to the fact that mentality is the single greatest barrier to internet spread. Younger users represent both present and future, so unavoidably the weight falls again on the educational system that has the critical responsibility of injecting society and its economy with people that are up to the challenges of the future.