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Online Population now Half Billion

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the they-can't-all-fit-in-my-living-room dept.

mattvd writes "According to CNN, the number of people with Web access at home by the end of 2001 was 498 million." Not surprisingly, Asia is growing the fastest. It's amazing that in only 10 years or so, the net has exploded so far, so fast, and now touches 10% of the earths population.

9 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wait by sc_demandred · · Score: 2, Informative
    Although it's not likely to happen anytime soon, having China connected would more than triple the percentage of humans that use the web.


    Sure, but if you read this article, it seems unlikely that the Chinese government will allow much in the way of freedom over the internet. The US would do well to squeeze China into relaxing the iron fist of censorship in order to promote freedom of Web... then we will see some serious innovation and the realization of the internet's potential.

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  2. A little perspective... by isaac · · Score: 4, Informative
    I'm not surprised that the internet has reached 10% of the world's population - it's the richest 10%. I'll be more (pleasantly) surprised when the internet reaches 30% of the world's population - because then it will truly have made inroads into currently unserved or underserved populations - i.e. the 85% of the world that lives in what people in the US, EU, Japan, S. Korea, etc. would call abject poverty. (People in the 80th or 70th percentile, though, are themselves significantly wealthier than the 60% of the world's population that could truly be described as economically poor.)

    For a little perspective, check out the brochure from the ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference 2002. A hopeful note, according to that link: "Africa now has more than twice as many main telephone connections as Tokyo and 85 percent of today's world population share 45 percent of all telephone lines (see Figure 1). In comparison, in 1984, 90 percent of the world's people used only ten percent of all telephone lines."

    -Isaac

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  3. Re:Slashdot/Asia? by President+Chimp+Toe · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let's just hope there's no Slashdot-Asia planned for the near future. That would REALLY take the Slashdot effect to a new level....

    Erm, there is dude. Check it out, its japanese.

    When we get chinese slashdot, then we really start frigging worrying.

  4. Nielsen/Net Ratings - more data by fleener · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is the PDF from Nielsen. It contains more data than the CNN story.

  5. 10%, 8%, 20% ...? by TheCrayfish · · Score: 1, Informative

    It is widely reported that more than 3 billion people in the world have no access to a telephone at all. In fact, according to the Center for Media Education, 18% of Americans lack telephone service.

    This makes the number of people online something like 15 to 16 percent of the population with telephone access.

    You can find some more interesting information about telephone and Internet access around the world here and here.

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  6. Re:Wait by skilef · · Score: 2, Informative

    Also, regardless of whether they use Linux, dumb terminals, or that Other Operating System, this would be a huge step forward for free speech and democracy.

    This subject has been discussed previous. According to this article/discussion about E-mail censorship and this one about WWW-censorship, free speech on the internet (and democracy?) will take a little longer in China.

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  7. Re:am from india....[OT] by univgeek · · Score: 2, Informative
    Err... yes they can. The telephony sector was a government monopoly. India was (is) a socialist state. That is not truly capitalistic. Only now the government has allowed competition in the local loop, and telephony in general. The international long-distance market was recently privatised (meaning competition from private companies) and so too the domestic long distance.


    VoIP is legal from March 1st or something. The only condition is that service providers must state if the call is toll quality or not in their ads.


    The cost of long distance was high in order to cross subsidize the rural areas. They are slowly giving up on this, although quite a large portion of the country now has telephony access due to this.

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  8. Re:AOL Market Share? by fred911 · · Score: 2, Informative

    "AOL doesn't seem like such a bad choice for dial-up service"

    Till you consider you can't use SLIP, PPP or PPoE to log on. In order to use sockets you need their bloatware installed on your boxen.

    Me... I just say no to that kinda crap.

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  9. Re:AOL Market Share? by terkozer · · Score: 2, Informative

    As much as AOL sucks, here's one upside that I have yet to find in another ISP. Travel to Germany, they've got a local phone number to call, travel to Argentina, they've got a local number, travel to Iceland, they've got a local number, you get the idea. If you are not travelling all over the place then please please please do not use AOL. If you are travelling, it's worth looking at as a "roaming" isp. Here's the link to their International Access Numbers.