6.3 Billion People Are Now Online: Mobile Internet Becomes Affordable in Landlocked and Small Island Developing States for the First Time
Mobile internet has become affordable in the world's landlocked developing countries and small island developing States for the first time, according to new figures released on November 3 by the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU): the median price of a basic mobile data plan in both groups has fallen below the internationally agreed target of 2 per cent of average income.
Some 6.3 billion people, 76 per cent of the world's population, are online this year, up from 6.1 billion in 2025, though 2 billion remain unconnected. “In the age of AI, being offline means being shut out of countless opportunities, from education to employment,” said ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin. “Now more than ever, we need to expand connectivity and make it meaningful for everyone, everywhere,” she said.
The gaps remain stark: prices remain stubbornly high in the least developed countries, at 6.1 per cent of income, and three in 10 economies meet neither the mobile nor the fixed broadband affordability target. Connection quality varies too: 5G networks reach 86 per cent of people in high-income countries but just 4 per cent in low-income ones, where the average mobile user gets through 3.4 GB of data a month, around six times less than in richer nations. Globally, a basic mobile data package now costs a median of 1.2 per cent of monthly income per person.
(Source: UN News)
Source: UN News
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：国际电信联盟（ITU）位于瑞士日内瓦的总部大楼。ITU／I. Wood 摄，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Headquarters of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland. Photo by ITU/I. Wood, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
