The 2008 publication of the Macau Information and Communications Technology Survey which was released this week showed that the internet penetration rate has increased sharply, but experts said local internet resources were still weak.
Published by the University of Macau's (UM) Macau Internet Research Project, the survey reported that as of the end of 2007, the local penetration rate of internet reached 64 percent in which the "digital divide index" continued on the fall from 0.32 in 2006 to 0.28 in 2007.
According to the UM press release, the results reflected that the internet has penetrated into the general public and all sectors in society have equal access to the world wide web.
At the same time, there were only 2,174 domain names registered with ".mo" and the per capita amount of domain names is 66 per 10,000 internet users which the UM said was "far below" the 568 level in mainland China.
According to assistant professor Cheong Weng Hin who conducted the research, the popularity of internet has already entered a "mature stage" and the decreasing digital divide index showed that the internet, as a new information, entertainment and communication platform, has been generally accepted and adopted by different sectors of society.
However, professor Cheong emphasised that basic resources for information technology remained "weak", especially where the number of local domain names registered only reached one tenth of mainland China's.
He said internet users of Macau were mainly dependent on outside resources and in order to facilitate the development of local information channels, he added that it was necessary for Macau to open the registration of domain names and simplify the process.
At present, the annual fee for owning a domain name ".com" or ".org" is less than US$10 and the registration process and requirements are very simple, the UM press release said.
By contrast, only locally and legally registered organisations and companies can apply for a ".mo" domain name in Macau, procedures are more complicated and fee is more than double that for ".com", the press release added.
The professor said opening internet resources is "the trend at the time", adding Macau should hold a more open attitude when moving towards internationalisation.
According to the press release, the bigger the digital divide index value is, the more unequal society is given access to the internet.
When the index is less than 0.2, it means "absolute equal"; between 0.2 and 0.3 means "generally equal"; whilst higher than 0.4 is "seriously unequal".