UN slams 'stubborn digital divides' keeping 1 in 3 offline

The United Nations said Wednesday that global internet use was slowly increasing, but warned that glaring disparities in poorer regions especially meant a third of the world's population remained offline.

An estimated 5.5 billion people are currently online, the UN's telecoms agency found in a fresh study.

That marks an increase of 227 million people compared with last year, according to revised estimates for 2023, the International Telecommunication Union said.

That shows "that one-third of humanity still does not use the internet", Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, head of the ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau, told reporters in Geneva.

He voiced concern about deep disparities between urban and remote rural areas, and cautioned that "universal connectivity remains a distant prospect" in many poorer countries.

In all, 68 percent of the global population is now online, the ITU said, but lamented in a statement that "stubborn digital divides persist".

The report "is a tale of two digital realities between high-income and low-income countries", ITU chief Doreen Bogdan-Martin said in the statement.

"Stark gaps in critical connectivity indicators are cutting off the most vulnerable people from online access to information, education and employment opportunities."

Indeed, the data presented in the ITU report shone a light on stark differences between regions and groups.

While 93 percent of people in high-income countries were estimated to be using the internet this year, only 27 percent of people in low-income countries were online, the report showed.

"The gap has almost been bridged in high income countries, while the divide remains deep in low-income countries," Zavazava said.

"The world is inching towards universal access at a time that it should be sprinting."

On the positive side, the ITU highlighted that the gender gap in internet access was shrinking, with an estimated 70 percent of men online, compared to 65 percent for women.

"Although there are 189 million more men than women using the internet, the report found that the world has been moving towards gender parity, except in the least developed countries," Zavazava said.

Less progress has been made on bridging the urban-rural divide, with 1.8 billion of the 2.6 billion people offline living in rural areas, the report showed.

"Our call for action is that we must intensify our efforts to connect to the world and not to leave anyone behind," Zavazava said.