Introduction and growth of mobile
"For every person online, there are two who are not. By the end of the decade, everyone on Earth will be connected." Does Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman and former CEO of Google, regret his tweet, or was it merely a sales pitch for the internet?
Schmidt was wrong. Although he didn't flat-out say that everyone in the world would be online by 2020, it was implicit in his statement. Sadly, that's not going to happen. In fact, internet use in developing countries is unlikely to achieve the target of 50% until 2020 according to The Broadband Commission.
The state of the internet
There's no doubt that the internet has done well. At the time of writing there are 3.2 billion people online – an impressive 40.4% of humanity – according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). It's tripled in popularity in the last decade, but its growth is now badly slowing. The stratospheric growth of the internet in its early years is understandable – the number of users almost doubled in 1999 and again in 2000 – but since Schmidt's proclamation the internet has had to settle for around 8% annual growth, a figure that's reducing each year.
With a massive four billion people still to connect (about two-thirds of the people in developing countries), that slow in growth is putting paid to Schmidt's prediction. The next time someone in the tech world talks about the opportunities for connecting 'The Next Billion', don't think them a visionary. There's a lot more work to do than that.
The growth of mobile
Is the internet at saturation point already? It may be getting more expensive to connect in the developing world thanks to stalled infrastructure projects, but the internet is still growing fast. It's all down to mobile phones, the fastest growing technology in human history. There are now seven billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide, with 95% of the globe now covered by a 2G signal.
In fact, Africa is the only region where mobile broadband penetration remains below 20%. GSMA Intelligence predicts that around half of the world's population in 2020 will be using mobile devices to access the internet. Now that's a stat we can believe.
"Mobile is now the gateway to the internet for billions of citizens across the world and will be responsible for connecting millions of currently 'offline' global citizens to the internet in the years to 2020 and beyond," says Anne Bouverot, Director General of the GSMA.
Developing world plays catch-up
Meanwhile, fixed broadband uptake will reach only 11% penetration by the end of 2015. In fact, the cost of fixed broadband plans in the least developed countries has been on the rise since 2011. Mobile broadband will mostly help areas of the world where, thus far, the internet just isn't a thing in any meaningful way.
Despite its reputation as an Asian tech outsourcing region, the Indian sub-continent is far behind most of the world – just 19% of India's 1.2 billion people use the internet, while in Pakistan it's 10%, and in Bangladesh it's just 6%. Many countries in Africa mirror those kind of figures. Less than a third of the world's rural population get 3G access, which is where the internet becomes easy to use on a phone.
Importance of the internet
Why internet access is important
The internet is more important than medicine, sleep and clothing. According to Peer 1's Human Potential of the internet Study, countries with low levels of access to the internet – including many nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East – were far more likely to agree that the internet improves quality, access to information, education, politics and even that internet access is necessary to their survival.
The study of 20,600 internet users across 25 countries found that people in developing countries think the internet is a force for social good, economic change, and education. "Nations with less internet access realise the potential of the internet even more so than places with high access," says Sheila Bouman, Executive Vice president and Managing Director, Peer 1 Hosting.
"Connectivity is not a luxury for the rich – rather, it is the most powerful tool mankind has ever had at its disposal to bridge development gaps in areas like health, education, environmental management and gender empowerment," says ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, though there's a gender divide, too. 16% fewer women than men used the internet in developing countries, compared with only 2% fewer women than men in the developed world, according to the ITU.
"Broadband uptake is accelerating, but it is unacceptable that 90% of people in the world's 48 least-developed countries remain totally unconnected," adds Touré.
Lack of infrastructure
The lack of internet access is the story of world poverty. Of the 940 million people living in the least developed countries, only 89 million use the internet, corresponding to a 9.5% penetration rate according to the ITU.
"Some of the world's poorest areas are also those most underserved by submarine cable landings, most notably the east and west coasts of Africa," says Liam Fisher, Creative Marketing Lead at Builtvisible. "It's easy to think of fast web access as something of a luxury, but the truth is that it can have transformative powers on developing communities, especially when you think of it in terms of access to education, and better communications during disasters."
Satellite internet access will also be crucial if the off-grid world is to get online – third-generation multi-beam Ka-band satellites should be online by 2020, which will double the maximum speed to 100Mbps, and allow a far higher capacity.
We already know that 25 billion 'things' will be online by 2020, but what about people? Eric Schmidt wasn't just wrong when he said that the entire world would be connected by 2020. He wasn't even close.
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