1/2 of all Humans Will Use Internet by 2017

Broadband, computing and Internet access now have taken the place of the older concern about access to voice communications. In fact, almost nobody worries about whether most humans will be using voice communications. These days, it is access to the Internet and computing that occupies policymakers.

Keep in mind that, just a few years ago, five of the the six billion people on Earth did not have access to computing or the Internet. But that is changing very rapidly, as well.

Although Africa, for example, lags in terms of other forms of computing and communications usage with an estimated 100 million Internet users, between 2000 and 2011 the growth of Internet usage in Africa exceeded 2,000 percent, which is more than five times that for the rest of the world.

Some 2.4 billion people across the world now use the Internet on a regular basis, at least once a month, from home, school, work, or any other location using a PC or a non-PC (mobile) Internet access device, Forrester Research says.

This is expected to grow to 3.5 billion by 2017, representing nearly half of the 2017 overall world population of 7.4 billion.

In some countries — mostly developed economies, such as the US, the UK, Japan, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands — Internet penetration as a percent of the overall population is very high; more than 80% of the population are regular Internet users.

In other, mostly emerging markets — such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nigeria — Internet penetration ranges between 10 percent and 50 percent.

A key point to note is that while higher PC penetration has driven the adoption of Internet in developed economies during the past two decades, faster mobile penetration in the emerging economies is helping increase the Internet population, thanks to “mobile-only” Internet users.