Castries, Saint Lucia – 4th April 2024 – A survey to ascertain information about access to, use and affordability of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and broadband products and services in the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority’s (ECTEL’s) five (5) Contracting States is well underway. The initiative is spearheaded by ECTEL, and forms part of the World Bank-funded Caribbean Digital Transformation Project.
The survey is ongoing in the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while enumerators began the process in St. Kitts and Nevis at the end of March 2024. According to Ms. Cheryl Hector Fontenelle, ECTEL’s Director of Economics and Finance, “The Digital Inclusion Survey will examine the use of ICT and broadband services, the levels of digital literacy and skills, as well as identify barriers to access and use of ICT and digital services.” The survey, being conducted by Data Point Solutions Inc., aims to target a total of 3,500 households and 8,750 individuals in ECTEL’s Contracting States and will be administered via online questionnaires/digital surveys, face-to-face interviews and/or telephone surveys.
Field personnel will be in uniform, and in possession of identification cards as well as a letter from ECTEL explaining the purpose of the survey. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), ‘by mid-2022, an estimated 5.4 billion people were online, over 63 percent of the world’s population.
Yet a third of the world’s people (2.6 billion) do not use the Internet. Many of them
