Growth Of Broadband And ICT Adoption By SMEs In Atlantic Canada

Since 2005, we have conducted three Atlantic Canada-wide surveys of SME businesses benchmarking levels of ICT adoption, change in adoption, as well as the role of marketing and export on ICT usage in helping to create growing and sustainable business opportunities. Despite Atlantic Canada’s low population base and distance to major population centres, SMEs in the region show strong levels of adoption of various ICT products and services. Broadband access, website adoption and online purchasing is now over 90%. Even newer social networking services, such as web analytics, search engine optimization, and the use of Twitter are being adopted by as many of 44% of the SMEs. These adoption rates will be compared with our previous studies to document the historical growth within Atlantic Canada, as well as compare these baseline measures to other regions within Canada, as well as studies of comparable regions worldwide.