More than one in three homes have internet access: census

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More than a third of New Zealand households have access to the internet, according to fresh census figures from Statistics New Zealand.

Thirty-seven per cent of New Zealand homes had some sort of link to the net in 2001.

But access was heavily dependent on income, location and ethnicity.

Over half the households with a couple and children, and six out of 10 people who lived in Asian households, could lay their hands on the internet.

But only one in four people in Maori families and one in five people in Pacific households had the internet at home or access to it.

The gap also widened in lower-income households ($10,000-$15,000) where only one in nine households had access to the web.

There was also a gap between urban and rural users -- 40 per cent of households in urban areas were hooked up, but only 26 per cent of rural homes were.

Auckland and Wellington had the highest rates of internet access with nearly nine out of 20 households, while Gisborne and West Coast households had the lowest rate of one in four.

The telecommunications survey also showed just over one in four homes had access to a fax, and more than 96 per cent had a telephone, compared with 82 per cent in 1966.

Only one in 25 households had no access to either the fax, phone or internet. That dropped to one in nine Maori households and one in eight Pacific homes.

One in seven homes with an income of $10,000 or less did not have any telecommunications listed in the survey.

- NZPA