Here in the West, many of us complain about how crappy our Internet connection is and how annoyed we are that we have to pay so much for it. In the less fortunate parts of the world, however, people can’t even connect to the Internet at all or, when they can, its barely usable. In fact, a new report from Facebook’s Intenet.org shows us that less than 40% of the world’s population connects to the Internet at least once a year.
State of Connectivity: A Report on Global Internet Access, a new study by Internet.org examines the current state of global internet connectivity and takes a close look at who’s connected, who’s not and why. The paper uses existing data from the world’s leading sources on connectivity and incorporates our own new findings to examine internet penetration and barriers to further growth. By early 2015, 3 billion people will be online. This is an incredible milestone, but it also means that only 40% of the world’s population has ever connected to the internet. The unconnected are disproportionately located in developing countries — 78% of the population in the developed world is online compared to just 32% in emerging economies. Moreover, adoption of the internet is slowing — The rate of growth declined for the fourth year in a row to just 6.6% in 2014 (down from 14.7% in 2010). At present rates of decelerating growth, it won’t reach 4 billion people until 2019.