Domain names in Flanders and Wallonie: the digital divide

DNS.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:

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:

💬 Belgium 🏷 dns