Internet diffusion & Internet domains: looking for a new metric. The case of registrations by italian individuals

This paper reports about the analysis of the Internet diffusion among families and business basing on daily observations on registrations of second level domain names underneath the ".it" ccTLD. In particular, domains registered by individuals are analysed. The penetration rate over the relevant population of potential adopters is computed at highly disaggregated geographical level (province). A concentration analysis is carried out to investigate whether the geographical distribution of Internet is less concentrated than population and income suggesting a diffusive effect.