According to a recent report from a United Nation agency, almost half of the world population will be online by the end of December (i.e. the end of the year 2016).
This is probably due to the decreasing price of mobile phones and mobile internet’s prices, the report by the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) stated.
Even with half of the world population set to go online by 2016, the number of the users are still concentrated in the developed countries. As the year comes to an end, about 80 percent of the people from developed countries are using the internet. The number computes to around 40 percent in the developing countries and only 15 percent in the less developed (or underdeveloped) countries.
When combined, all this calculates to about 47 percent of the world’s population going online, which is still 13 percent short of one of United Nation’s target of 60 percent population going online by 2020. The data shows that about 3.5 billion people are expected have internet access by the end of this year.
The report has mentioned that only 1 person among 10 is online in Africa, and other poor and fragile countries.
According to the union, a specialized agency for information and communication technologies, the offline population mainly consists of less educated people, poor people, people living in rural areas, the female and the elderly.
Even with more than 50 percent of the population offline, 47 percent is still a good number. This has happened mostly due to smartphone manufacturers decreasing their mobile phones’ price, and telecommunication companies providing cheaper mobile internet to their users.
Although there is a trend of most of the less developed nations’ population not having access to the internet, the number of Nepalis having access to the internet is increasing. A research conducted by Nepal Telecommunication Authority in 2015 showed that nearly 44.11 percent of the population had internet access. This surely has increased in 2016 with the increased number of budget smartphones entering the nation every now and then.
Talking about the less developed nations, the report stated, ‘Internet penetration levels in less developed countries today have reached the level enjoyed by developed countries in 1998, suggesting that the less developed countries are lagging nearly 20 years behind the developed countries.’
2016 was a fruitful year in the internet sector. With 47 percent of the world already online, the 60 percent target set by U.N. isn’t that far away.
