According to the data of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Macedonia, in the first quarter of 2011, 55.0% of the households had access to the Internet at home, which is 8.9% percentage points more in comparison with the same period in 2010. Participation of the households with broadband connection in the total number of households increased from 37.2% in 2010 to 42.1% in 2011. In this period, the most common Internet connection, used by 46.5% of the households with internet access, was broadband connection that includes: fixed wired (cable, fiber, Ethernet, PLC etc.), fixed wireless (satellite, public WiFi, WiMax) and mobile connection to the Internet (via at least 3G handset- UMTS, or at least 3G modem-USB/card for laptop).
In the first quarter of 2011, 58.9% of the total population aged 15-74 used a computer, while 56.7% used the Internet.
Internet was most used by pupils and students, i.e. 96.6%. The Internet was most frequently used, by 82.9% of the internet users in the last 3 months, for participating in social networks (e.g., creating user profile, posting messages or other contributions to facebook, twitter, etc.)
In the first quarter of 2011, only 4.1% of the internet users that had ever used the Internet, placed orders through the Internet for buying goods or services for private purpose, while 6.7% did so in the last 12 months, mostly for buying clothes or sport equipment (20.4%).
Of those who used the Internet in the last 12 months, 22.2% used e-government services, for obtaining information (18.2%), for downloading official forms (11.2%) from the public authorities’/administrations’ websites, and for sending filled in forms to the public authorities’/administrations’ websites (7.4%).
Training or courses (of at least 3 hours) on any aspect of computer use in the last 3 years were attended by 14.2% of individuals that have ever used a computer, 21.5% had a course on computer use 3 years ago, while the rest (64.2%) have never taken one. The main reason for not taking computer courses, by 67.8%, was no need to take one because their computer skills were sufficient