More than half the world is still offline

Despite falling prices for ICT services, more than half of the world’s population is still not connected to the internet, the latest ITU figures show.

The UN agency estimates that 3.9 billion people remain cut-off from the vast resources available on the internet.

The newly released report ICT Facts & Figures 2016 shows that developing countries now account for the vast majority of internet users with 2.5 billion users compared with one billion in developed countries. Internet penetration rates, however, tell a different story.

In developed countries, internet penetration is pegged at 81% of the population, compared with 40% in developing countries and 15% in the least developed countries. It is also higher for men than for women in all regions of the world.

The report noted that the global internet user gender gap actually grew from 11% in 2013 to 12% in 2016. The regional gender gap is largest in Africa, at 23%, and smallest in the Americas, at 2%.

By early 2016, international internet bandwidth had reached 185,000 gigabits per second, up from a low of 30,000 gigabits in 2008. However, bandwidth is also unequally distributed globally, and lack of bandwidth remains a major bottleneck to improved Internet connectivity in many developing and least developed countries.

ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao said more needs to be done to bridge the digital divide and bring the more than half of the global population not using the internet into the digital economy.

“ITU, given the tremendous development of ICTs, has a key role to play in facilitating their attainment,” affirmed Brahima Sanou, the Director of the ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau.