Global Growth Of Access To Internet In Dramatic Decline Despite Positive Forecasts- Report

The annual growth of access to the Internet around the world has sharply fallen since 2015 despite positive expectations, amounting to less than 6 percent in 2017, the Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday, citing a soon-to-be-published report by the US-based Web Foundation.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th October, 2018) The annual growth of access to the internet around the world has sharply fallen since 2015 despite positive expectations, amounting to less than 6 percent in 2017, the Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday, citing a soon-to-be-published report by the US-based Web Foundation.

The report notes that the growth rate stood at 19 percent in 2007 and, if it had steadily amounted to 11 percent in consecutive years, over half a billion more people would have connection to the Internet. Currently 3.8 billion out of all the world's 7.6 billion people do not have access to the web, according to the newspaper.

"We underestimated the slowdown and the growth rate is now really worrying ... The problem with having some people online and others not is that you increase the existing inequalities. If you're not part of it, you tend to lose out," Web Foundation's Research Director Dhanaraj Thakur said, as quoted by the newspaper.

The lack of connection to the Internet mainly concerns most undeveloped nations in the world with African women being the ones who gained access to the Internet the least last year, the Web Foundation underlined.