More Than Half of the World Doesn’t Use Internet

Internet, recognized as critical to achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, is available to only 48% of world’s population.

Latest report issued by UN, titled: “State of Broadband 2017”, said that only 76% of the world’s population lives within access of a 3G signal, and only 43% of people live within access of a 4G connection.

Thus, the majority of the connected world remains under-connected, most of them in developing countries. Unless people have the opportunity to migrate from 2G to at least 3G to 4G and beyond, they remain under-connected.

Interestingly, Pakistan has been ranked 4th with most number of under-connected or un-connected population.

The report said that while internet access has been getting better, there are several emerging challenges that the world faces today.

It said that developed markets grew their indicators far better than developing or emerging markets, showing that digital inequality between developed and developing countries is growing quickly.

Similarly, gap in transmission speeds is also increasing. While quoting Akamai, the report said that worldwide, 4, 10, 15 and 25 Mbps broadband adoption rates increased by 13%, 29%, 33% and 42% year-on-year, respectively.

Global average peak connection speed increased 28% year-on-year to 44.6 Mbps for Q1 2017. The Republic of Korea continues to have the highest average connection speed globally (at 28.6 Mbps, up an impressive 9.3% since Q4 2016 alone), while Singapore continues to have the highest peak connection speed at 184.5 Mbps.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, the lowest performing countries continue to suffer from barely increased average national speeds, suggesting that the absolute gap is increasing.

Report also highlighted that 4G rollouts are more focused towards urban areas where 3G is already available, indicating that currently under-connected or un-connected populations will have to wait longer for better broadband technologies.

At a time when more than half of the world is under-connected, the report said that operators have started to face slowing growths — both in subscription and revenues — indicating that they will have to adapt to meet consumer demand for data.

Complete report can be downloaded by clicking this link.