Nearly half the world is online

[Becky]

According to a new study conducted by the United Nation's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 47% of the world's population is online. The 3.9 billion people who are not online are "disproportionately female, elderly, less educated, lower income, and rural".

But with the resources and desire, almost everyone could be connected. Ninety-five percent of the global population lives in an area that is covered by a mobile cell signal. But while most people have access to Internet services, many don't actually use them, largely due to high prices.

"To bring more people online, it is important to focus on reducing overall socio-economic inequalities," ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao said in a statement. "Education and income levels are strong determinants of whether or not people use the Internet."

Source: PC Mag

It was also in the news recently that SpaceX has plans to provide worldwide internet using a network of 4,425 satellites in low-Earth orbit as early as 2019. The company expects latencies to be in the region of 25-35ms which is similar to wired internet connections, and hopes to provide bandwidth of up to 1GB/s.

Maybe SpaceX will rapidly increase the percentage of people online? Time will tell.

Read more about SpaceX's plans here: ARS Technica

 

[nivrip]

I wonder how long before almost all are.

 

[Becky]

Hopefully not too long I'm intrigued by the worldwide satellite internet idea. Although it raises a lot of questions - for example, if just one organisation is responsible for it, what are the security risks? Just think how valuable all that information will be. And what about countries like China and North Korea?