A United Nations agency today said that by the end of this year, more than two billion people will be using Internet, which is about 30 percent of the world’s total estimated population. The report from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said that growth in developing countries was slow and Internet access is a vital tool for growth.
The report noted that the number of users had doubled in the last five years, thanks to the burst in mobile communication and smart phones that enable cheap Internet access possible. This year itself about 226 million new users were added and more than half of it were from the developing countries. The report said that by the end of the year, about 71 percent of the population in the developed countries will have access while only 21 percent from the developing countries will be able to get access.
In Europe, 65 percent of the total population has access compared to the 55 percent in America. Only 9.6 percent of the population living in Africa have Internet access while 21.9 percent from Asia/Pacific. Another study by a U.N. agency showed that mobile phones were far more significant and important to people than the Internet. With cheaper mobile phones and plans in the market, people from the developing countries would be willing to spend more on mobile phones rather than Internet itself.
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