MANILA, Philippines – Nearly 47 percent of global population is now online and 3.5 billion people will be using the Internet by end of 2016, according to a new report of a United Nations commission.
Released just ahead of the 14th meeting of the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development in New York, the report titled “The State of Broadband 2016” highlights some of the findings:
• By end 2016, 3.5 billion people will be using the Internet, up from 3.2 billion last year, or roughly 47 percent of the global population;
• There are now 91 economies where over 50 percent of the population is online, up from 79 in 2015;
• The top 10 developing countries for household Internet penetration are all located in Asia or the Middle East;
• Republic of Korea has the world’s highest household Internet penetration (98.8 percent), followed by Qatar (96 percent) and United Arab Emirates (95 percent);
• Iceland has the highest percentage of individuals using the Internet (98.2 percent), followed by Luxembourg (97.3 percent) and Andorra (97 percent); and
• The lowest levels of Internet usage are in sub-Saharan Africa, with less than three percent of the population using the Internet in a number of countries including Chad (2.7 percent), Sierra Leone (2.5 percent), Niger (2.2 percent), Somalia (1.8 percent) and Eritrea (1.1 percent).
The report also highlighted the potential of mobile broadband, with 165 countries having deployed the 4th generation or “4G” high-speed mobile networks.
“As smartphone penetration reaches near-saturation in the US, Europe and mature markets in Asia like Japan and [Democratic Republic of] Korea, India and Indonesia in particular are expected to drive future growth,” the International Telecommunication Union, a specialized UN agency said.
Findings from the report also revealed that that India, which overtook the US to become the world’s second largest Internet market (333 million users), also overtook that country to become the world’s second-largest smartphone market, with an estimated 260 million mobile broadband subscriptions.