Internet growth slowing: UN

A report by the UN Broadband Commission released on Monday said that growth in Internet access was predicted to drop further this year as rich economies reach saturation point, while 90 percent of people in the 48 poorest countries had no chance to go online.

The report said that the access growth rate was expected to drop to 8.1 percent in 2015, as compared with 8.6 percent in 2014. Growth had been in double figures in the years up to 2012.

Some 57 percent of the world's population, or more than 4 billion people, still did not use the Internet regularly or actively, according to the report - a figure that falls far short of a UN target of having 60 percent of the world online by 2020.

The report blamed the shortfall on costs of extending infrastructure to include rurual and remote customers, and a dramatic global downturn in the growth of mobile cellular subscriptions.

Language difficulties

Speakers of minority languages were particuarly at a disadvantage, the report said, saying that only about 5 percent of the world's 7,100 languages were represented on the Internet. It said the widespread use of the Latin alphabet made even reading domain names difficult for many users who do not understand it.

Women in poorer countries were also far more likely than others to be without Internet access, it said, with 25 percent fewer women than men using the Internet in developing world. In some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, that figure doubled, according to the UN.

The report showed the Asia-Pacific region as having the largest share - 46.6 percent - of the total global market for fixed broadband subscription, a rough indicator for overall Internet usage.

Europe had 23.8 percent, followed by the Americas on 22.7 percent.

Africa, Arab states and CIS countries all lagged far behind, well under double figures.