Investigating and Evaluating Internet Usage in Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Abstract

Internet usage has witnessed a dramatic increase in Kurdistan region of Iraq and has become an essential part of everyday life with tens of ISPs available and number of users constantly increasing. In this paper, we study the purposes of using the internet amongst different level of educations, an evaluation of available ISPs, the characteristics of internet service in terms of speed, quality, cost and upload, download quota as well as the satisfaction ratio of internet users. We also study users’ preferences on frequently used devices to connect the Internet, the preferred Internet access time, the Internet usage frequency, and the average daily time spent by internet users. To investigate and evaluate the research objectives, a quantitative research method was used and the survey was taken into the Google website (Google Forms). The results of the online questionnaire completed by the 331 participants who use the Internet in Kurdistan region of Iraq. The results revealed that social networking was the main purpose of using the internet. The users identified speed to be the most important factor when evaluating internet service and the average satisfaction of users is satisfied and neutral. Nonetheless, the results shows that Smart-phones are the most popular type of device used by internet users, and the average time spent by users online is 5.1 hours with more than three quarters of the respondents use internet on a daily basis. Finally, the highest traffic on internet is (from 6 PM to 12 AM)