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• 7. Organisations on the Net

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• Statistics on IT in NZ

The data in this section is derived from figures supplied by Mark Davies of Victoria University of Wellington.

When an organisation connects to the Internet, it typically registers a "domain name". In this section we attempt to estimate the number of organisations connected by counting the registered domain names.

Each third level New Zealand domain, eg name.co.nz, that has been registered is assumed to belong to a separate organisation (this is in accordance with the policy of the domain name registry in New Zealand). Sub-domains are not counted, thus moc.govt.nz is counted but comms.moc.govt.nz is not. In general each third level domain is given to a different organisation, be it a company, school, government department etc, so domains are a good measure of the number of organisations connected.

The following graph shows the total number of network connected organisations as a time series over the last three years.

New Zealand Internet Domains

It is clear that there is strong growth in the registering of domains in New Zealand. There are now 9620, or over three times as many registered domain names as there were in March 1996. This mean that nearly 10,000 New Zealand organisations have some form of Internet connection.

Over the year to March 1997, registrations grew at 213%, although at times during the past year the annual growth rate has been as high as 420%. Since March 1994 the monthly growth has been compounding at an average of 11%.

7.1 Types of Organisation

Organisations are allocated domain names according to organisation type. The penultimate part of a name, such as the "co" in name.co.nz is used to categorise domains. This part of the name is often called a second level domain. In New Zealand the following second level domains are used:

This table represents the policy for allocating names now, and does not cover a number of historical anomalies. In particular, ISPs have been registered in ac.nz, gen.nz and co.nz as well as net.nz.

While there is provision for individuals to have domain names of their own in the gen.nz domain, most do not. Therefore numbers of domains registered is not a good indicator of individuals using the Internet.

The following graph shows the split of commercial (co.nz) to non-commercial organisations (all others).

New Zealand Internet Domains Commercial Vs. Non-commercial

This graph shows a significant rise in the number of commercial domain registrations over the last year from 2,551 to 8,348, an annual growth rate of 227%. Over the same period growth in the registrations of non-commercial domains has also been increasing rapidly at a rate of 142% from 527 to 1,276, although this increase is somewhat overshadowed by the growth in commercial domain registration.

The following graph charts the commercial domain information as in the graph above, however, a line mapping the annual growth rate is added.

Companies Registered on the Internet in New Zealand

This graph also shows the substantial growth in the registration of New Zealand companies on the Internet. However, the line plotting the annual growth shows that the annual growth rate peaked in April 1996, and has been falling steadily since, although it is still at 227%.

The following graph shows how the non commercial domain registrations are split for the March 1996 and 1997 years. As can be seen, there has been significant growth in the number of organisations registering under the org. domain over the year. This domain now comprises 31% of the non-commercial domains.

New Zealand Non-commercial Internet Domain

7.2 Direct Connection versus Mail-Only Connection

There are two ways in which an organisation can connect to the Internet: a direct connection allowing full access, or a mail only connection. The latter type of connection would typically be used to enable the users of a corporate mail system to send and receive Internet mail messages, without providing them full Internet access. Both kinds of connection are growing rapidly.

The following graph shows the ratio of directly connected organisations to mail connected organisations for the March 1994-97 years. It indicates the proportion of organisations connecting directly to the Internet is growing. By 1997, 64% of connected organisations were directly connected, up from 40% in 1994.

Split Between Directly Connected and Mail-only Connected Organisations