Internet Service Provider 2018

The Internet service provider survey was typically a paper survey of all businesses that met the population selection criteria, however in 2018 we have tried a new online mode for the survey. The online survey mode is a new initiative Stats NZ is undertaking to modernise our current collections with today's technology driven environment. The online questionnaire collects the same information as the 2017 paper questionnaire. In 2018, we updated our download and upload speed questions to match the growing capabilities of bandwidth speeds by internet connections. The published tables reflect these changes. Population size The Internet Service Provider (ISP) Survey is a survey sent to all New Zealand-based Internet service providers. The target population for the ISP Survey in 2018 was 92 businesses. 7 businesses identified in the survey population ultimately did not report ISP activity and were deemed out of scope. The target population has increased since 2017, when 83 businesses were surveyed. These minor changes in the population can be explained by: • birth of new businesses that are selected for reporting their main business activity as Internet Service Provision • businesses that previously were consolidated together answering individually for their subsidiaries Population scope Businesses are included in the population for the ISP survey if they reported activity as an internet service provider in the 2017 ISP survey. Further businesses are considered for addition to the population if their main business activity or main income sources include any of a list of internet related keywords, and their industry sector is one typical for an internet service provider (such as telecommunications). Such businesses will be added to the population if research indicates that they currently provide any internet connection services. Scope error is possible if a business acts as an ISP, but their reported industry sector is not typical of an ISP. This error is mitigated by subject matter experts manually adding businesses to the population once they are publicly renowned. Response rates The overall target response rate for ISP 2018 was 85 percent. The achieved response rate was 86 percent for the in-scope businesses. Some businesses were identified as key units if their total number of connections made significant contribution in the previous ISP survey. The target response rate for key businesses was 100 percent, which was achieved. Non-Response The ISP Survey is a census; therefore the data is not subject to sample error. Unit non-response occurs when a business does not return the questionnaire. While weighting is commonly used in other Stats NZ surveys, it is not applied to the ISP Survey. This is because there are no external (non-survey) variables that allow us to group businesses in a way that they are likely to provide similar survey responses, and therefore be representative of one another. To minimise the impact of unit non-response on the outputs, key respondents are targeted with 100 percent response rate targets. Therefore, we do not expect overall figures to be significantly affected by unit non-response. Imputation for unit non-response was not applied for similar reasons. Item non-response is not applied to the ISP survey either, as above. en-NZ