More Than Half of World’s Population Still Not Connected to Internet
According to the World Bank, 9 billion devices are connected to the internet today, but more than half of the world’s population is still not connected.
Technologists and government officials say getting connected is critical to improving the lives of many people.
“We have got huge fights in terms of corruption, transparency, [and] openness, and technology is really the vehicle we’re using to ensure that whatever transactions are taking place, you can see them. They’re digital,” said Joe Mucheru, Kenyan Cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Information, Communications, and Technology.
But there are still areas of the world that are not connected, said Hilton Romanski, senior vice president and chief strategy officer of Cisco, a multinational technology company based in the U.S.
Denis O’Brien, chairman of the mobile phone company Digicel, says that once people start using smartphones, they talk less and use more data, making high-speed service or broadband a necessity.
He said that building the infrastructure in developing regions is a challenge, pointing out, “Everybody’s built the easy bit. In other words, they’ve done the towns and the cities, but going into rural communities — they haven’t done it because the business case is very thin.”
Technology experts said the private and public sectors need to come together to bring the internet to remote and developing regions, and drive economic growth.
“Any country that wants to create investment and be a location for investment to create employment, the first thing you need is broadband,” O’Brien said.
Cisco’s Romanski said it takes cooperation among private, government, and nonprofit sectors to maximize the impact of technology.
“So it’s going to take all the parties coming together to drive the right cultural shift and the right education into these countries so that the developing market can, over the long term, enjoy the benefits of economic growth,” he said.
The experts agreed that positive change in a nation can happen if education about technology is combined with the right policies.
