According to the 2016 Uruguayan Internet-User Profile, eight among ten Uruguayans are internet users and the digital divide is declining in the different segments of the population.

Without smartphones, mobile internet or social networks. If you close your eyes and imagine you are in the beginning of the 2000 decade, you would find a world were desktop computers were the main gadget, Internet cafes spread up like mushrooms after the rain and people connected to the internet trough noisy modems.

When Uruguay was making its first steps into the new millennium, the consulting group Radar started a survey wanting to know how Uruguayans internet users behave. “No one had asked internet consumers anything”, explains Alain Mizrahi, Radar’s director.

The Radar group started in 2001 the “Uruguayan Internet-User Profile” to define what was the internet penetration in the country and to answer another questions (like what was the main use and how many time people were connected to the web). Few weeks ago, the 2016 results of the enquiry were known. The study shows the many changes experienced in all these years in the relationship of Uruguayans with internet, in hand with the different innovations.

For example, in 2001 only three among ten consulted had a computer in their homes. Among those who were internet users, the most frequent answer when asked how many times they were on the web was no more than an hour a week. In the 2016 edition of the study (where 1700 phone and 2202 online enquiries were made) the consulting group had to change the question, because it had no sense to ask about a week connection time. Today, Uruguayan internet users are connected an average of 4,4 hours a day, a 28% of the daytime if we consider the eight hours of sleep.

The computer made room to the cellphone, which with the irruption of mobile internet technology is the preferred gadget for two thirds of the users. The rise of mobile internet was meteoric. While in 2010 only 13% acceded the web trough its cellphone or tablet, in 2012 the percentage was 20%, and in 2013 33%. A year later, 60% used internet in their mobile devices.

Also in 2014, in hand with the popularization of instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, an explosive growth of cellphones with internet connection occurred. In a year people having phones with internet connection rise from 370,000 to 850,000. Six among ten Uruguayans had a phone with internet connection.

Connection types

In the first surveys, the main internet connection in the Uruguayan homes was the dial-up modem. Year by year this type of connection started to lose weight. In 2002, 97% of homes had this type of internet access. In 2005 the figure was 75%. A year later 53% used dial-up type connections.

In 2007 ADSL was the preferred connection: 57% of Uruguayan homes had ADSL. But things change. In 2014 ADSL was replaced by optical fiber.

Also the reason why people used internet changed. In the beginning sending and receiving e-mails was the main use for internet. In 2010 Facebook replaced e-mail. In that year the Mark Zuckerberg creation spread among Uruguayans. 21% of the people answered that they expended their time in internet using social networks. In the last edition of the inquire, Facebook and WhatsApp chat took the first place.

Social networks

Social networks experienced a wild growth in the past years. While in 2008 only 19% answered that they used social networks regularly, by 2010 these numbers climbed to a 61%. The last figures show that even though Facebook is still the king, others networks are staring to steal a portion of the territory. Instagram replaced Twitter as the second preferred social network in Uruguay. Adepts to networks are using more Instagram (33%) than Twitter (22%). But Facebook is still the first choice for a 97%.

Anyway the last study showed that Facebook came to a standstill in the frequency of use and in the “friends” number of each user.

Buying without leaving home

The possibility to buy goods or services trough internet seemed, not long ago, a thing imagined in a Ray Bradbury story. In 2001 almost 90% of internet users had never bought anything trough the web. “I am not interested/It is not necessary” was the most common answer. In the last edition of the enquiry this situation has radically changed. During the last year, almost 1.3 millions of Uruguayans (the 66% of internet users over 18 years old) used internet to buy something.

Meanwhile, the arrival of Uber at the end of the past year brought a new player to electronic commerce. According to Radar there are more than a million monthly transactions trough the Uber app, representing 5.5 million dollars by month.

Outside these services there are other 830,000 Internet monthly transactions. The main items are clothes and footwear (11%).

When buying abroad, Uruguayans choose Amazon, Ali Express and EBay. This modality was encouraged by a system created in 2012, but modified several times, which allows users over 18 years old to make up to four yearly purchases, which can’t exceed 200 dollars by purchase.

Radar also draws attention in the relationship Uruguayans have with companies and brands. More than 8 of 10 users search information about them on the web. In fact 700,000 do this regularly. Mizrahi says “a lot of companies have not yet understood the importance of being present on the web”. Social networks, says Mizrahi “are not only for teenagers”, people pay attention at the posts of the different brands and share what they like or dislike. In this field Uruguayan companies have things to improve.

The vision of four internet leaders

Álvaro Lamé- President of the Uruguayan association of Information Technology (CUTI)
Director and Founder of the first Uruguayan private internet service provider company, Lamé highlights many changes in the past years, starting by the speed of internet connections. The expansion of internet he says has generated a big impact in all the business models in almost all industries. What is to expect from now on: internet of things, digital cities and autonomous cars.

Nicolás Jodal – Founder and CEO of Artech
With Breogán Gonda, Jodal founded in the eighties the company that is today a heavyweight in the local software industry, with Genexus as its main product. Jodal points out some milestones in internet history, like e-mail masification or the overwhelming success of smartphones. He also says that Uruguay is “number one” in a lot of things like its optic fiber network and the experience of the Ceibal plan. Additionally he emphasizes the good level of local system engineers.

Álvaro García- Co-founder of PedidosYa
The company Garcia devised with his two partners Ruben Sosenke and Ariel Burschtin, revolutionized the way Uruguayans asked for food delivery, and now it’s expanding trough the continent. For him the most important change was the consolidation of mobile apps and smartphones. “For our business it was a radical change”, he says. In the first month after the app launch in 2012, 4% of food orders came from his platform. Today 75% of people ask for food delivery trough PedidosYa and the goal is to achieve 80% in the next year. “There are people that don’t know that we have a website”, he says. He points out that a tremendous change was the possibility to pay with electronic payment.

Miguel Brechner – President of Plan Ceibal
The man who was in charge of the Uruguayan “one laptop per child” program, says that the impact of the Ceibal plan in the country has been essential. “There is no digital divide in Uruguay” he says, commenting that the plan allowed impoverished homes to have access to things that seemed unreachable. Brechner says that the presence of optic fiber in almost every home marked “a before and an after”, because the user experience changed completely. The same happened with the popularization of smartphones. He also highlights the “explosion” of Whatsapp.

Source: El Observador