Roberto Costa introduced the way the respondents panel, or "SWG community" is composed and "recruited" – tens of thousands of respondents, with more than 1,000 new subscribers each month. The panel is clearly composed of active internet users.

Speaking of the difficulty in assembling a representative sample, there is a striking difference with the rest of Europe: the digital divide exists in Italy even within the households where an internet connection is present – in other words, it cannot be assumed that the internet connection is used by all the family members. I believe that this creates a difficulty in having a good sample for the overall population, especially in the 65+ age segment. But it is a limit in the potential of online services in the broadest sense – information, e-commerce, business…

I remember a local initiative here in Trieste, making some workstations available in public places and asking youngsters to volounteer and help interested elder citizens to try and access the internet. I didn’t pay much attention at that time, but maybe it was a good idea: I shall try and see what the results were.