Latest ITC facts

1. Vocabulary

2. Read the text

Latest ICT Facts and Figures by End of 2010

Since two thousand five, the number of Internet users worldwide has doubled to more than one and a half billion people. At least two billion are expected to be online by the end of 2010. It is expected that more than seventy percent of new Internet users will be in developing countries. Still, only twenty-one percent of the population of the developing world is online -- compared to seventy-one percent in developed countries.

There are still very huge divides when it comes to accessing the Internet, especially high-speed and high bandwidth Internet. In developing countries, you have only one out of five people using the Internet. If we look at certain regions like in Africa, for example, the figures are even lower. In Africa we have not even ten percent of the population using the internet.

Less than sixteen percent of homes in developing countries are wired for the Internet. But, on the other hand, mobile phone usage has reached sixty-eight percent in developing countries. The world has almost seven billion people now. Nine out of ten have access to mobile networks. More and more people in developing countries are using their mobile phones to connect to the Internet.

The fact is that it's rather difficult to put in places the cable infrastructure and the fiber infrastructure and therefore the mobile networks really offer a great opportunity for people in developing countries to connect to the Internet over the wireless networks.

Mobile technology is already improving lives in developing countries. For example, banking by phone, e-health services and farm reports by text messaging are becoming increasingly popular. And the possibilities will only grow as broadband or high-speed connections become more widely available. The broadband is even called now "the next truly transformational world technology".