Related News
Access growth rate for Internet is slowing
Print Edition
GROWTH in the number of people with access to the Internet is slowing, and more than half the world’s population is still offline, the United Nations Broadband Commission said yesterday.
Internet access in rich economies is reaching saturation levels but 90 percent of people in the 48 poorest countries have none, its report said.
The access growth rate is expected to slow to 8.1 percent this year, down from 8.6 percent in 2014. Until 2012, growth rates had been in double digits for years.
“We have reached a transition point in the growth of the Internet,” the report said.
The commission, set up in 2010 by the International Telecommunication Union and UNESCO, the UN scientific and cultural agency, said the milestone of 4 billion Internet users was unlikely to be passed before 2020.
It said growth in Facebook subscribers was outpacing growth in the Internet.
“Over half the world’s population — some 57 percent, or more than 4 billion people — still do not use the Internet regularly or actively,” the report said.
It blamed the cost of extending last-mile infrastructure to rural and remote customers, and a sharp slowdown in the growth of mobile cellular subscriptions globally.
By the end of this year, 3.2 billion people will have some form of regular access to the Internet, up from 2.9 billion in 2014. That is 43.4 percent of the world’s population, still far short of a UN target of 60 percent by 2020, according to the report.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
