Report show that almost half the world will be online by end of 2016

According to a United Nations agency, almost half of the world's population will be using the internet by the end of 2016, as mobile networks continues to grow and prices fall, but their numbers will remain concentrated in the developed world.

According to a report by the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialized agency for information and communication technologies, about 80 per cent of the population in the world's developed countries use the internet. Meanwhile only about 40 per cent in developing countries and less than 15 per cent in less-developed countries are on the internet.

According to the report, only one person in 10 is on the internet in several of Africa's poorer and more fragile countries.

Those offline are mainly female, elderly, less educated and poorer people who lives in rural areas, said the union.

47 per cent of the world's population globally, is online, still far short of a UN target of 60 per cent by the year 2020. 

About 3.9 billion people, more than half the world's population, are not on the internet and the ITU expects 3.5 billion people to have access to the internet by the end of 2016.

"In 2016, people no longer go online, they are online. The spread of 3G and 4G networks across the world had brought the internet to more and more people," the report said.

According to the report, telecoms and internet companies are expanding as more affordable smartphones encourage consumers to browse the internet, causing demand to grow for data-heavy services. However, less-developed countries - LDCs - still trail the rest of the world.

"Internet penetration levels in LDCs today have reached the level enjoyed by developed countries in 1998, suggesting that the LDCs are lagging nearly 20 years behind the developed countries," the report said.

The report blamed the cost of services and of extending infrastructure to rural and remote customers and the high price of mobile cellular use.

Reuters