5 Billion New Internet Users Next 10 Years?

"Only about two billion of the world's seven billion people have an internet connection, and I believe the remaining five billion will get one in the next decade," says Eric Schmidt, Google chairman.  "Almost one billion of them will come online in India."

Whether Schmidt is precisely right about the timing, adding five billion people to the ranks of Internet users in just a decade is a huge and obviously significant undertaking. 

Developing nations will become the focus of broadband growth over the next decade or two, building on a substantial amount of growth since about 2005.

By the end of 2011, 2.3 billion people (around a third the world’s population) accessed the internet globally, almost double the 1.2 billion figure recorded in 2006, according to Ofcom.

Over this period growth in internet use was fastest among developing countries, and by 2011 62 percent of Internet users were located in developing countries , an increase from 44 percent in 2006.

developing nation broadband will double between 2011 and 2015, for example.