Two thirds of the world’s population are online, one third are not – progress to 3 billion offliners in 2021, but a long way to go to full coverage in 2030.
Around two thirds of the world’s population now use the Internet, which continues the increase of previous years: 3.6 billion people were offline in 2019, 3 billion in 2021, now 2.7 billion. This was reported by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on Friday in Geneva, correcting the offliner estimate given in the previous year from 2.9 to 3 billion. In 2016, 3.9 billion people had no internet access.
Fast internet connections and permanent power sources
The growth has thus slowed down again compared to the Covid 19 beginnings, so that the ITU sees its self-imposed goal in danger that the entire world population will be online by 2030. More investments in infrastructure and more education are now needed.
Most of the undeveloped population lives in remote, hard-to-reach areas. It is important to enable the people there to have permanent Internet access, which not only requires cheaper hardware and mobile phone tariffs, but also fast Internet connections and permanent power sources in the first place. In addition, illiteracy and gender-specific discrimination must be reduced.
According to the ITU, internet availability in Africa increased by 13 percent last year, and 40 percent of the population are now online. In the Arab countries 70 percent are online, in the Asia-Pacific countries 64 percent and in the USA 80 percent. Europe is best supplied, 89 percent of the population is online.
