More than two billion people globally will use mobile devices to connect to the Internet in 2016, with countries like India, China and Indonesia leading the way, research firm India Data Corporation said.
According to www.economictimes.indiatimes.com, overall,
an estimated 3.2 billion people representing 44 per cent of the world’s
population will have access to the Internet in 2016.
“Growth in Internet access is taking place around the world,
but some countries are seeing particularly rapid growth. China, India and
Indonesia lead the way and will account for almost half of the gains in access
globally over the course of the next five years,” the portal quoted IDC as
saying in a statement.
The combination of lower-cost devices and inexpensive
wireless networks are making accessibility easier in countries with populations
that could not previously afford them, it said.
According to Internet and Mobile Association of India, India
was expected to reach 402 million by December 2015, registering a growth of 49
per cent over 2014. About 306 million of these are expected to access Internet
from their mobile devices.
IDC said the global mobile Internet userbase is forecast to
grow at two per cent annually through 2020 unless significant new methods of
Internet access are introduced.
Efforts by Google, SpaceX, and Facebook among others to make
the Internet available to the remaining four billion people via high altitude
planes, balloons, and satellites are underway.
However, it remains unclear how successful these endeavours
will be and when they will be operational at scale, IDC said.
“Over the next five years, global growth in the number of
people accessing the Internet exclusively through mobile devices will grow by
more than 25 per cent per year while the amount of time we spend on them
continues to grow. This change in the way we access the Internet is fueling
explosive growth in mobile commerce and mobile advertising,” Program Director
of Strategic Advisory Service, Scott Strawn said.
More than two billion use email and read news online and
more people than ever before are making purchases online, the statement added.
Internet start-ups in India are joining the front line
against Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg and his plan to roll out free
Internet to the country’s masses.
The government has ordered Facebook’s Free Basics plan on
hold while it decides what to do.
The program, launched in more than 35 developing countries
around the world, offers pared-down web services on mobile phones, along with
access to the company’s social network and messaging services, without charge.
But critics say the program, launched 10 months ago in
collaboration with Reliance Communications, violates principles of net
neutrality, the concept that all websites on the internet are treated equally.
It would put small content providers and start-ups that don’t participate in it
at a disadvantage, they say.
“India is a test case for a company like Facebook and what
happens here will affect the roll out of this service in other smaller
countries where perhaps there is not so much awareness at present,” said Mishi
Choudhary, a New York-based lawyer who works on technology and Internet
advocacy issues.
Also at stake is Facebook’s ambition to expand in its
largest market outside the United States. Only 252 million out of India’s 1.3
billion people have Internet access, making it a growth mark .
In a letter seen by Reuters, the heads of nine start-up
including Paytm, backed by China’s Alibaba Group, and dining app Zomato, have written
to the watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India urging it to ensure
Internet access was allowed without differential pricing.
The executives said in the letter, dated Tuesday, that
differential pricing for Internet access would lead to a “few players like
Facebook with its Free Basics platform acting as gate-keepers”.
“There is no reason to create a digital divide by offering a
walled garden of limited services in the name of providing access to the poor,”
they wrote.
Zuckerberg has got personally involved.
“We know that for every 10 people connected to the Internet,
roughly one is lifted out of poverty,” he wrote in The Times of India newspaper
this week. “We know that for India to make progress, more than 1 billion people
need to be connected to the Internet.
“What reason is there for denying people free access to
vital services for communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming
and women’s rights?”
A company spokesman said the aim of Facebook’s Free Basics
initiative was to give people a taste of what the internet can offer. And
Facebook has issued a series of full-page newspaper advertisements and set up
billboard banners in an unusual and aggressive campaign to counter the
protests.
Culled from Punchng
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