How Much of the World Has Access to the Internet?
Introduction
Objectives
This report presents the state of internet accessibility across the world by answering these specific questions:
| ㅤ 1. What are the top five (5) countries with the highest internet use (by population share)? How many people had internet access in those countries in 2019? |
| ㅤ 2. What are the top five (5) countries with the highest internet use for each of the following regions: Africa Eastern and Southern, Africa Western and Central, Latin America & Caribbean, East Asia & Pacific, South Asia, North America, and European Union? How do we describe these regions' internet usage over time? |
| ㅤ 3. What are the top five (5) countries with the most internet users? |
| ㅤ 4. What is the correlation between internet usage (population share) and broadband subscriptions for 2019? |
| ㅤ |
Data Used
The following tables were used in the analyses, which are part of The World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).
Acknowledgments: Max Roser, Hannah Ritchie, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2015) - "Internet." OurWorldInData.org.
Internet
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| Entity | Name of the country, region, or group |
| Code | Unique id for the country (null for other entities) |
| Year | Year from 1990 to 2019 |
| Internet_Usage | Share of the entity's population who have used the internet in the last three months |
People
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| Entity | Name of the country, region, or group |
| Code | Unique id for the country (null for other entities) |
| Year | Year from 1990 to 2020 |
| Users | Number of people who have used the internet in the last three months for that country, region, or group |
Broadband
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| Entity | Name of the country, region, or group |
| Code | Unique id for the country (null for other entities) |
| Year | Year from 1998 to 2020 |
| Broadband_Subscriptions | Number of fixed subscriptions to high-speed internet at downstream speeds >= 256 kbit/s for that country, region, or group |
Results and Discussion
Countries with the highest internet use by population share
- Results show that four (4) out of the top five (5) countries with the highest internet use (by population share) are located in the Middle East, which are Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Note: The most recent 2019 data was used for this comparison.
Internet Usage Over Time of Top Five Countries with the Highest Internet Usage in 2019
Number of people that had internet access for these countries in 2019
- Among these countries, UAE had the highest number of internet users in 2019.
Number of Internet Users of the Top Five Countries with the Highest Internet Use by Population Share
Countries with the highest internet use by population share per region
- Seychelles (Africa Eastern and Southern), Cape Verde (Africa Western and Central), Aruba (Latin America & Caribbean), South Korea (East Asia & Pacific), Maldives (South Asia), Bermuda (North America), and Luxembourg (European Union) are the top countries with highest internet use per region.
- Considerably, these countries are not the largest when it comes to the size of land as compared to others.
Note: The 2017 data was used for each region's comparison as it is the most recent year with the most available country data.
Africa Eastern and Southern
Internet Usage Over Time of Top Five East and South African Countries with the Highest Internet Usage in 2017
Africa Western and Central