International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reported on Thursday that over a third of the world’s population is online. The U.N. agency said not only is a vast portion of the world on the Internet, but mobile phone use has increased by more than 600 million in 2011 to around six billion. “On the back of the increase in broadband services worldwide, the number of people using the Internet grew by 11 percent over the past year … ie, 2.3 billion people,” the ITU said in its 2012 report on information and communication technologies (ICT).
Internet connectivity prices in Africa were almost seven times higher than in America, and 20 times higher than in Europe in 2011. Macau, Norway and Singapore were considered the countries that had the cheapest Internet connections to offer. Madagascar was at the bottom of that list, next to Togo and Niger.
Mobile phones with an Internet connection had the sharpest growth of all ICT sectors between 2010 and 2011, according to the agency. It said that almost 1.1 billion people had subscriptions by the end of 2011. While lower-income countries struggle to provide cheaper Internet access, cell phones have continued to take over.
About 32 percent of Internet use is done on a mobile broadband connection in developing countries. It said that nine of the top 20 telecom markets globally in terms of revenue were developing country markets, such as Brazil, China, India and Mexico. In the latest report, ITU ranks 155 countries according to their level of ICT access, use and skills, and compares 2010 and 2011 scores.
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