The available data on the number of Internet users are often imprecise, not very reliable, and almost always exaggerated. We report what has emerged at the Sat-Expo 2002, a market-exhibition held in our town, Vicenza, from 4th to 7th October 2002.

33% of the Italians who are older than six can use a personal computer, 22% of the people over the age of eleven surf the Internet. According to the data published by ISTAT (Italian Institute of Statistics) in its annual report, nine million Italians are familiar with the Internet, and this seems a trend that cannot be stopped, since daily life and the economic reality are more and more conditioned by the Network. Perhaps the Internet is not yet something without which it is impossible to live, but it is certainly an extraordinary means of communication for many people, and communication is the basis of everything.

Although the diffusion of PCs and the Internet has grown very rapidly in the past few years, and the use of the new technologies has increased, there is still a "digital gap".

Indeed, only 3,5% of the Italians use the Internet. 54% of the PC users utilise it on a daily basis, and 31% access the Internet every day. People use the PC to work (60%), play (57%), and study (35%). 20% of the people access the Internet in order to talk, using a chat-line, a forum or a newsgroup, while 9% "go shopping" in the network. Almost 8 million people use the net and CD-ROMs for cultural inquiries, with percentages close to 40% for young people between 14 and 19 years old.

In Italy, the Internet use is constantly growing, to the point that our country is going up in the European and world list. Nevertheless, since the telephone lines market is de facto still a monopoly in our country, the high cost of the telephone connections is probably one of the main reasons for the Italian "digital gap". A package of 20 hours a month to access the Internet (about 30 Euro) is still much cheaper in the USA and some northern countries than in the European Union.

The negative instance of Italy, followed by Spain, has a few exceptions which go beyond technical and economic difficulties. According to the ISTAT report, in spite of the relatively cheap connection costs for private users, the two countries have the lowest number of people who use the net. Among the main reasons for this, there are the limited number of personal computers compared to the population, the unreliability of many providers (when the connection is intended for business use), and, generally speaking, the lack of knowledge of the English language and limited confidence in the field of computer science or "techno-hostile" devices. As a confirmation of this assertion, Italians are famous for being the happy owners of the highest number of cellular phones in Europe. Indeed, cellular phones are apparently easy-to-use devices, even though they are computer-controlled and with a well-hidden technological core. The economic factor also has some weight when dealing with non-essential goods such as computers: only 11% of the needy families own a computer, compared to 42% of the well-off ones.

An analysis of the demographic categories is more significant than "absolute numbers" : with regard to this subject, it is interesting to notice that senior citizens are always at a disadvantage, when coping with technological innovations, for a combination of all these reasons. Nevertheless, once they have been given an appropriate training, senior citizens prove to be competent and interested users of the new technologies.