Concerns as $3.5tr Investment Gap Cuts Off Three Billion People From Online Access

Written By: Flipbz.org

About 4.7 billion people or 58 per cent of the world’s population, now use mobile Internet services on their own device, according to the flagship yearly State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report from the GSMA.

However, despite 96 per cent of the global population living in areas with mobile Internet coverage available to them, 3.1 billion people are still not using it. These people – 38 per cent of the world’s population – sit within what is known as the Usage Gap, with barriers other than coverage availability keeping them offline.

An estimated $3.5 trillion is now required to make the Internet available to those offline over the last eight years to 2030.

According to GSMA, mobile remains the primary, and in many cases only, way most people access the Internet in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and now accounts for 84 per cent of global Internet connections.

Progress continues to be made in delivering mobile Internet coverage to everyone, everywhere, with an additional 40 million people covered by mobile Internet infrastructure last year, the majority (75 per cent) in Sub-Saharan Africa. This leaves around 300 million people (four per cent of the global population) living in what is labelled the Coverage Gap, lacking any available mobile Internet connectivity.

This means that 3.4 billion people globally remained unconnected to mobile Internet services in 2024 – a combination of the Usage Gap and the Coverage Gap. The overwhelming majority (over 90 per cent) of these live in areas with available coverage, but they remain unable or unwilling to use it.

Closing this Usage Gap would provide an estimated $3.5 trillion in additional GDP globally over the eight years to 2030.

The vast majority (93 per cent) of the unconnected live in LMICs, where further divides pose additional challenges. Adults living in rural areas in LMICs are 25 per cent less likely to use mobile internet services than those in urban areas, while women in LMICs are 14 per cent less likely than men to be online via mobile.

Key barriers to mobile Internet adoption include awareness of mobile Internet, affordability (primarily of handsets) and digital skills and literacy.

Across LMICs, the affordability of an entry-level, internet-enabled device has remained relatively unchanged since 2021 and represents 16 per cent of average monthly income, increasing to 48 per cent for the poorest 20 per cent.

Director-General of the GSMA, Vivek Badrinath, said: “Although ‘the digital divide’ and ‘connect the unconnected’ have been on the agenda for well over a decade, the time has come to drive more meaningful progress.

“A device at $30 could make handsets affordable to up to 1.6 billion people who are currently priced out of connecting to available mobile internet coverage.

“To produce this will require a concerted, collaborative effort between the mobile industry, device manufacturers, policy makers, financial institutions and more, but it is a responsibility we all must shoulder.”