According to new data from market research firm eMarketer, the web will reach 2.89 billion users in 2015, or what equates to 42.4% of the world's population. This would mark a 6.2% jump from this year and reach about two in five people on a global scale.
The company projects even more growth in the upcoming four years; about 3.6 billion people (or half the world's population) will be online at least once a month by 2018.
This influx is largely due to the availability of lower-cost mobile phones and broadband connections in emerging markets, like India and Indonesia.
"Inexpensive mobile phones and mobile broadband connections are driving Internet access and usage in countries where fixed internet has been out of reach for consumers, whether that's due to lack of infrastructure or affordability," said Monica Peart, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer. "While highly developed markets are nearly saturated in terms of internet users, there's significant room for growth in emerging ones; for example,
India and Indonesia will both see double-digit growth in each year between now and 2018.
India and Indonesia will both see double-digit growth in each year between now and 2018."
Tech companies are doing a lot to get people online, too. For example, the nonprofit Internet.org is bringing free data to parts of Zambia in Southern Africa and plans to introduce the app to other parts of the world soon. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched the organization, along with support from other tech companies like Ericcson, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung.
eMarketer charted the countries where people of all ages access the Internet at least once a month; China tops that list with 620.7 million users in 2013, followed by the U.S. with 246 million.
However, the firm believes Brazil will jump ahead of Japan to No. 4 in 2014 and India will surpass the U.S. by 2016. The acceleration projection for China is noteworthy too and potentially make up three-quarters of a billion users in four years.
Both Facebook and Google are battling it out to become the first high-profile company to bring Internet connectivity to remote locations around the world, with the social networking giant this week revealing further details of its drone-based initiative that it hopes will enable it to achieve its goal.
The bold project, which could see drones take to the skies by 2019, is part of the Facebook-backed Internet.org initiative, with mobile-related companies such as Samsung, Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson, and MediaTek also involved.
Helping Internet.org toward its mission aim is the Connectivity Lab, a team of experts assembled to help build the necessary technology so it’ll be able to “beam Internet to people from the sky” – as Mark Zuckerberg once put it – from drones capable of staying airborne for months at a time. Satellites could also be used, as well as free-space optical communication (FSO) technology, which uses light to transmit data through space via invisible, infrared laser beams.
Speaking at the recent Social Good Summit in New York City, Connectivity Lab engineering director Yael Maguire said he hoped to start testing the drones some time next year.
High fliers
Maguire explained that the solar-powered flying machines would operate at an altitude of between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, well out of the way of all airspace and weather systems. However, according to the director, there are currently no rules about flying above 60,000 feet, a factor that’s causing the team some concern as regulations imposed at a later date could become an issue for the project.
In addition, an existing one-operator-per-drone rule could severely limit the number of unmanned aerial vehicles that the team launches, which would understandably adversely affect the scope and shape of the project. Maguire hopes it can be arranged for one operator to pilot around 100 drones.
What may surprise some is the size of Facebook’s flying machine, which Maguire says could be as large as a Boeing 747 aircraft. It would, however, be considerably lighter than the popular wide-body airliner.
According to Maguire, one of the current designs is the length of “about six or seven Priuses, but is the weight of four of the tires of a Prius.”
If next year’s tests prove successful and the team manages to overcome a myriad of technical challenges, Maguire envisages the drones could be delivering Internet to locations in 21 countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia in 2017, or by 2019 at the latest.
