Thursday, December 13, 2012

Middle Class Will Explode Globally, So Will Use of Broadband Internet

Middle classes most everywhere in the developing world are poised to expand substantially in terms of both absolute numbers and the percentage of the population that can claim middle class status during the next 15-20 years, according to the National Intelligence Council

That has huge implications for providers of communication services, especially Internet-related applications and services. India, China and the rest of Asia provide examples, as those regions will far outstrip the share of middle class consumption in the United States, Japan and European Union, for example. 

At the same time, the United States, European, and Japanese share of global income is projected to fall from 56 percent today to well under half by 2030.

Note the dramatic increase in economic growth the Council expects will happen between now and 2030. It took Britain 155 years to double gross domestic product per capita, The United States and Germany took between 30 and 60 years to do so.

India and China are doing this at a scale and pace  not seen before: 100 times the people than Britain and yet a doubling of GDP in one tenth the time. By 2030 Asia will be well on its way to returning to being the world’s powerhouse, just as it was before 1500, NIC analysts say.


Sub-Saharan Africa, rural India, and other traditionally isolated regions are being globally connected. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly rich sensor platforms, enabling nearly all communication mediated by technology to be tracked and analyzed at a fine level of detail.

More than 70 percent of the world’s population already has at least one mobile device; global mobile data traffic in 2010 was three times the size of the entire Internet in 2000.

By 2015, in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, more people will have mobile network access than with electricity at home.


As much as it has been a "problem" figuring how to ensure that billions of humans who "never have made a phone call" is a problem we have largely solved, the next challenge is assuring that those billions of people who do not presently use the Internet can do so.

The amount of change we will see will be breathtaking.

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