Roundup: San Luis internet, BTL, social networks

Some 90% of the population of Argentina's San Luis province regularly connects to the internet - the highest rate in the country - according to statistics from the Universidad de La Punta (ULP), as reported on the provincial government's website. ULP rector Alicia Ba�uelos said connectivity had been boosted by the provincial government's strong support of a digital agenda, including the introduction of a free WiFi network to which 329,700 people connect daily from a population of 431,158 inhabitants, according to the national statistics agency Indec. Some 57,741 connect to private networks, and 43,717 do not connect at all to the internet. *** Belize state-owned telecoms incumbent BTL is upgrading its btl.net email service, powered by Google, providing customers with new applications and features. The upgrades will provide subscribers a more stable and secure email service, allowing customers to access their account from anywhere in the world. The service will upgrade its virus protection and spam filtering and provide more storage, increasing the mailbox size from 15 MB to 7GB. The maximum size of attachments sent increased to 25 MB, from 10 MB. *** Chile ended 2010 with about half of the country's population registered with social networks like Facebook and Twitter, according to consultancy Media Interactive. Chile has 8mn registered Facebook accounts and a little more than 1mn Twitter accounts, and social networks are increasingly being used by brand names to reach their clients. "Half of the population is providing information ranging from opinions of friends through Twitter to photos of a recent concert uploaded to Facebook. Chileans are increasingly connected on a daily basis to social networks, which form part of their day-to-day routine," said Alan Gringras, CEO of Media Interactive.