Dear Editor,

Thank you for highlighting certain trends in Internet usage and ICT penetration in Jamaica by reporting on my address to the website launch event of the St Elizabeth Homecoming Foundation held in Parottee in that parish recently.

However, I hasten to correct an error in your report that gave the impression that eight out of 10 households had Internet access and seven out of 10 homes had computers. The numbers are actually in the reverse.

According to my report on the Caribbean ICT Indicators and Broadband Survey of 2011, only two out of every 10 homes had Internet connections and under three out of 10 households had computers. Of course, the figures alter once we add mobile broadband and access outside of the home, but there are still too few Jamaicans productively using Internet-linked computers.

It is on this basis of an unacceptable gap in mainly household Internet usage that I made the public call for greater effort by both Government and private providers to bring down the cost of computer equipment and Internet connections.

These high costs were indicated as the biggest impediments to low-income people buying computers and acquiring Internet services in the home.

I had also indicated from the survey results that more women were online than men, but this point was unclear in your report.

I trust that these clarifications will make the article you published easier to understand and that the measures I advocated, such as lower-cost computers and the removal of taxes on computer equipment, will be acted upon as early as is practicable.

Hopeton Dunn

MSB, UWI, Mona

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