TECNOSFERA
Portugal takes steps to boost wireless Internet use: Portugal hopes to become one of Europe's most tech-savvy nations by ensuring all university students and professors are equipped with laptops with high-speed wireless Internet access, a senior government official said.
"Our goal is to more than just make up for our lag in this area -- we want to place Portugal at the head of European nations in terms of high-speed Internet use," said Diogo Vasconcelos, the director of UMIC, the government body in charge of promoting the use of new technologies, told reporters.
"We hope through the students to touch the rest of society," he added.
Under the government plan, all of Portugal's 150,000 university students and professors will be eligible to purchase a laptop at a special rate which the government has negotiated with major computer-makers. [...]
There were 5.74 million subscribers of Internet services in Portugal, a nation of just over 10 million, at the end of the first quarter of 2003, according to ANACOM figures.
[E assim o mundo ficou a saber que mais de metade dos portugueses está ligado à Internet, graças a estas "estatísticas" da Anacom nunca desmentidas...]