Three-quarters of people over 10 own a mobile phone: UN - Tech Xplore

Nearly 3 quarters of radical implicit the property of 10 present ain a mobile phone, perchance opening the mode to broader net use, the United Nations said Wednesday.

The UN's International Telecommunication Union has provided its archetypal estimation of determination and planetary ownership, revealing that 73 percent of the world's colonisation implicit 10 years of property owned a cellphone successful 2022.

"Mobile phones are the astir communal gateway to internet use, with the percent of ownership serving arsenic an indicator of net availability and access," the ITU said arsenic it launched its annual report connected planetary connectivity.

But it cautioned that mobile phone ownership remains higher than net use—especially successful lower-income countries, with broadband usually much costly than cellular-only services.

The ITU recovered that mobile phone ownership had grown steadily successful caller years, estimating it had risen from nether 67 percent successful 2019.

The online colonisation besides saw a large "bump" up successful 2020 during the archetypal twelvemonth of the COVID-19 pandemic, ITU elder economist Thierry Geiger told AFP.

Unsurprisingly, ownership was highest successful affluent countries, wherever 95 percent of radical presently ain a mobile phone, and lowest successful low-income countries, wherever lone 49 percent do, the ITU said.

'Digital darkness'

The UN's telecoms bureau says astir a 3rd of the satellite has inactive ne'er been online.

But the online colonisation has been expanding and an estimated 5.3 cardinal people, oregon 66 percent of radical worldwide, are present utilizing the internet.

"Access to the net is increasing, but not arsenic rapidly and evenly crossed the satellite arsenic it needs to," Doreen Bogdan-Martin, who heads the ITU's telecommunications improvement part and volition soon instrumentality implicit arsenic bureau chief, said successful the statement.

"Too galore radical inactive unrecorded successful integer darkness."

Estimates of planetary net usage typically look astatine the terms of mobile-broadband services, which let users to entree the net from a smartphone and are comparatively inexpensive compared to a fixed net service.

According to Wednesday's report, the planetary median terms of mobile-broadband services dropped from 1.9 percent of mean gross nationalist income (GNI) per capita past twelvemonth to 1.5 percent now.

However, the outgo inactive remains excessively precocious for the mean user successful astir low-income economies, wherever a basal mobile information program is estimated to outgo 9 percent of GNI per capita.

The ITU called connected each countries to guarantee affordable broadband access, defined arsenic costing little than 2 percent of GNI per capita.

While the outgo of connectivity appears to beryllium continuing its decline, Geiger warned rising costs for different necessities could unit galore to determination offline.

The ITU study besides recovered a important sex gap: immoderate 259 cardinal less women person entree to the net than men.

Only 63 percent of women are presently utilizing the internet, compared to 69 percent of men, it said.

© 2022 AFP