More than 60% of the world’s population still isn’t plugged in to the Internet, and the rate of adoption is slowing, new data show.
The entire the country of Myanmar is basically disconnected from what’s happening online, according to the Washington Post, citing data from a McKinsey & Co. study and the World Bank. Ethiopia, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bangladesh are the other countries whose percentage of offline population exceeds 90%. India, the second-most-populous country in the world, still has 1.06 billion people offline, or about 85% of the population.
In China, 736 million out of 1.36 billion are not online, and that figure is rapidly shrinking, according to the study.
Overall, three-quarters of the world’s offline population lives in 20 countries.
In the U.S., 50 million people, or roughly 16%, aren’t using the Internet, though many are offline by choice.
Some of the barriers to accessing Internet cited in the McKinsey study include lack of infrastructure, such as network access, grid electricity and mobile Internet coverage. Countries with a less-connected population also have higher rates of illiteracy and poverty and have greater rural areas. The report estimates between 1 billion and 2.8 billion cannot get online using a smartphone or tablet because of insufficient mobile-network coverage.
Source: Market Watch, http://ecadforum.com/
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