The Digital Divide
Dear Reader,
This is our first Newsletter of the year 2016 and I wish to send
our best greetings to our over 23,267 readers worldwide and to welcome the new
subscribers. I also wish to thank the readers that write to us with questions,
suggestions and pointing out errors and mistakes. We appreciate your messages
and feedback. Unfortunately, we cannot give reply to them all, but be assured
that we read them all.
The year 2015 statistics were updated for November 30, 2015 and the final figure
estimated is
3,366,261,156 Internet users, with a 46.4% world penetration rate.
The Internet statistics for the main six world regions were also updated for
November 30, 2015. Facebook subscriber data were also updated for November 15, 2015
for most of the world countries. After this general data update, we got curious
about the evolution of the
Digital Divide in the world, something very related to Internet growth.
For this analysis, we prepared the table you can see below, together with some of
our observations. | |
Internet World Growth
The following table shows the world Internet growth between
Dec 2000 and Nov 2015 in the following World Geographic Regions.
|
World
Regions |
Internet
Dec 2000 |
Internet
Nov 2015 |
Growth %
2000-2015 |
|
ASIA |
114,304,000 |
1,622,084,293 |
1,319.1 % |
|
EUROPE |
105,096,093 |
604,147,280 |
474.9 % |
|
EUROPEAN UNION |
94,593,400 |
402,937,674 |
326.0 % |
|
AFRICA |
4,514,400 |
330,965,359 |
7,231.3 % |
|
NORTH AMERICA |
108,096,800 |
313,867,363 |
190.4 % |
|
SOUTH AMERICA |
14,292,100 |
249,291,302 |
1,644.3 % |
|
MIDDLE EAST |
3,284,800 |
123,172,132 |
3,649.8 % |
|
CENTRAL AMERICA |
3,217,400 |
77,876,335 |
2,320.5 % |
|
OCEANIA / AUSTRALIA |
7,620,480 |
27,200,530 |
256.9 % |
|
THE CARIBBEAN |
559,419 |
17,656,562 |
3,056.2 % |
|
WORLD TOTAL |
360,985,492 |
3,366,261,156 |
832.5 % |
|
Note: Internet Users are total number of persons.
Copyright © 2016, |
From the above table, several facts become evident about the Internet's current
situation and growth in the world: the region with the highest number of users
is Asia, with a 40.2% penetration rate, and high digital divide.
The region with the highest growth rate is Africa, however, it still has a very
low Internet penetration rate of 28.6%, indicating a high digital divide.
The region with the highest Internet penetration rate is North America, 87.9%,
indicating a very low digital divide.
|
2016 Telecommunications Trends
The
Global Telecoms Trends report from Paul Budde provides you with a
summary of key trends for the global telecoms sector as well as an overview of
developments at a regional level. This valuable report also includes recent key
statistics for the overall global telecoms industry as well as statistics for
the mobile, mobile broadband, Internet, satellite and fixed broadband sectors.
Regarding Facebook world stats, it is interesting to point out that estimates
show 1,515,204,150 million subscribers in November 15, 2015, and a world
penetration rate of 20.9%.
|