The number of enterprises in Cyprus using high speed internet connections increased in 2017, according to study published on Thursday by the Statistical Service of the Republic of Cyprus.

An announcement says that the percentage of enterprises having maximum download speed between 10Mbit/s and 30Mbit/s has reached 44% compared to 39.4% in 2016. For speeds between 30Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s the corresponding percentages for 2017 and 2016 were 18.9% and 11.8 %.

In 2017, 61.1% of the enterprises used mobile broadband connections, while fixed broadband connection is used by nearly all enterprises.

When it comes to e-commerce, 40.7% of all enterprises purchased in 2016 goods or services via web sites or apps, while 11.5% of the enterprises received orders for goods and services via websites or apps.

Compared to 2016, a small decrease is observed in the percentage of enterprises having a website, from 74.7% to 72.8% in 2017, while nearly all large enterprises have a website.

Among the facilities provided by the enterprises through their website, the most common is the description of goods and services and price lists which is provided by the 72.7% of all enterprises. Also, 41.7% of all enterprises have links or references to the enterprise’s social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, and 12.7% offer personalized content for regular or repeated visitors.

According to the study, the upward trend in the use of social media continued in 2017, with 66.8 % of enterprises using them. Social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn are the most popular with a percentage of 65.3% followed by enterprise blogs or microblogs such as Twitter with 28%, multimedia content sharing websites such as YouTube and Flickr with 26.6% and Wiki based knowledge sharing tools with 4.6%.

Moreover, 21.8% of enterprises buy Cloud Computing Services compared to 10.2% in 2016. The percentage reaches 40.6% in large, 33.2% in medium and 19.5% in small enterprises.

Also 24.8% of enterprises employ ICT specialists, while 79.7% of large enterprises employ ICT specialists compared to 49.5% and 19.7% for medium and small enterprises respectively.

The survey took place during January-May, 2017 and covered 1,865 enterprises with ten or more employees from all government-controlled areas of the Republic of Cyprus.

The sampling method used was stratified random sampling and data collection was conducted with the use of a web based questionnaire and through personal interviews with the IT manager of the enterprise.