World will have 2.7 billion Netizens by end of 2013: UN report

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

The world will have 2.7 billion netizens by the end of 2013 which is about 39 per cent of the global population, according to a UN report.

According to the he Millennium Development Goals Report 2013 which was released last week, growing infrastructure in information and communications technology, including mobile-broadband networks, along with social media, innovative applications and falling prices for services continue to drive Internet uptake in all regions of the world.

The report said that in the developing world, 31 per cent of the population are online, compared to 77 per cent in the developed world. Sub-Saharan Africa, where less than 20 per cent of the population are using the Internet, remains the region with the lowest penetration rate.

Globally, 37 per cent of women are online, compared to 41 per cent of all men. The gender gap is more pronounced in the developing world, where 29 per cent of women use the Internet, compared with 33 per cent of men.

This means that 16 per cent fewer women than men are using the Internet in the developing world, compared with 2 per cent fewer women than men in the developed world.

The report also stated that a large majority of countries worldwide have launched third-generation (3G) mobile-broadband services, and an increasing percentage of the population are covered by a high-speed mobilebroadband signal. By the end of 2013, subscriptions for fixed broadband are expected to total nearly 700 million, and 2.1 million for mobile broadband.

The report projected 6.8 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions by the end of 2013, a global penetration (measured as the number of subscriptions in relation to total population) of 96 per cent. “It will reach 89 per cent in developing countries. As penetration levels approach market saturation in an increasing number of countries, subscription growth rates have fallen to their lowest levels ever in the last year— around 6 per cent in developing and 4 per cent in developed countries,” the report added.

Developing countries now account for over 77 per cent of all the world’s mobile-cellular subscriptions, and the mobile-cellular digital divide hasbeen substantially reduced, the report said.