Domain names in Flanders and Wallonie: the digital divide
18 Feb 2005DNS.be, the Belgian non-profit organisation that manages the .be domain, has published new statistics on domain name distribution in Belgium. They added geographical statistics for e.g. the domain names per inhabitant in 2004. Some numbers:
- 1000 Brussels: 18,2 domains/100 inhabitants (or ‘dom/100’)
- 2000 Antwerp: 16,2 dom/100
- 3000 Leuven: 9,5 dom/100 (but 3118 Werchter: 35 dom/100!)
- 3500 Hasselt: 7,6 dom/100
- 4000 Liege: 2,5 dom/100 (but Sankt Vith: 14,2 dom/100)
- 5000 Namur: 3,5 dom/100
- 6000 Charleroi: 2,8 dom/100
- 7000 Mons: 2,5 dom/100
- 8000 Brugge: 5,4 dom/100
- 9000 Gent: 7,2 dom/100
Wallonie may seem already a bit behind here, but it gets worse when you go outside of the major cities: where in Flanders most villages/municipalities have on average > 2 domain per 100 inhabitants (like my hometown: 8840 Staden: 4,6 dom/100), in Wallonie not even half of the villages have one domain name per 100 inhabitants. This gives contrasts like: 3300 Tienen: 2,9 dom/100, and 1357 Hélécine, right next door: 0,7 dom/100.
This reminds me of the launch we did of the StaatsbladClip email newsletter: the subscriptions were 10 to 1 Flemish. In the weekend, we would have peaks of the Dutch-language subscriptions, while the traffic on the French-language newsletter would be just about dead. Flemish people go home and switch on the PC. In Wallonie, they put on their boots and go hunting.
Some more weird numbers:
- being close to France does not seem to incite more DNS activity, however being close to Germany (the Rocherath/Sankt Vith area) has a positive effect.
- what’s with 3461 Molenbeek (Bekkevoort)? Every town in the vicinity has a normal score (1,5-3 dom/100) but they are at 0,4. Is there some other demographic responsible for this (like: no ADSL available there, average age > 75 years)?
- the 2nd best score is for 1831 Diegem: 20 dom/100, which might have something to do with the number of IT companies in its industry parks. But why does Werchter score 35 dom/100? Who registered those 1091 domains? Rock Werchter? A pro-active DNS registrar?
