Nelson Mandela once said, "If we cannot ensure that this global revolution creates a world-wide information society in which everyone has a stake and can play a part, then it will not have been a revolution at all."  We know that not everyone has the skills and resources to be involved in this technologic revolution. For example, Less than 1% of people in South Asia are online, even though it is home to one-fifth of the world’s population.  (UN human development report, 1999).  Forty-one percent of North Americans have internet access compared to 3% of those in Latin America and 2% in Asia/Pacific (Jupiter Communications, 2000).

While the Internet is creating new ways of doing business and communicating, it unintentionally creates a disparity between the haves and the have-nots, perhaps faster and more significantly than any other movement in history. InterConnection’s primary goal is to provide groups with the ability to join the Internet revolution by "getting online". 

Barriers to internet access include:

·         Telecommunication infrastructure
·         Poverty
·         Government

 The following statistics illustrate the technology divide between developed and developing countries:

·         30 percent of the US population is online compared with an average of 0.6 percent in developing countries. 

·         UN Human Development Report, industrialized countries, with only 15% of the world’s population, are home to 88% of all Internet users. Less than 1% of people in South Asia are online even though it is home to one-fifth of the world’s population.

November 1, 1999

 ·         More than 80% of the world’s people have never heard a dial tone, let alone sent an email or downloaded information from the web.

BBC News 2001

·         Nearly 90 percent of all Internet users are in industrialized countries, with the United States and Canada alone accounting for 57 percent of the total. In contrast, Internet users in Africa and the Middle East, together account for only 1 percent of the global Internet users.

International Labour Organization, 2001

·         The US and Canada alone account for 57 per cent of the world’s Internet users whereas Africa and the Middle East together account for only 1 per cent. It is estimated that approximately 75 per cent of all Internet information is produced in just one language: English.

International Labour Organization, 2001

·         The most striking digital gender divide relates to Internet use, with women in the minority of users in both developed and developing countries. For example, only 38 percent of Internet users in Latin America are women, while in the European Union the figure is 25 percent, in Russia 19 percent, in Japan 18 percent, and in the Middle East 4 percent.

·         Nearly all the world’s information and communication technologies (ICT) is produced by approximately 15 per cent of the population (living mostly in industrialized countries). Only about one-half the world’s population even has access to the electricity, phone lines and other infrastructure necessary to enable them to adapt these technologies in production and consumption. That leaves most of the world’s population at a significant disadvantage and at least one-third of the world’s population "technologically disconnected."

International Labour Organization, 2001

 ·         Africa’s entire population of 739 million people has fewer than 14 million telephones.

International Labour Organization, 2001

·         The estimated online population in Africa is 1.15 million.  The majority of internet users in Africa are from South Africa, with just over a million users.

EMarketer, 2000

Internet Use Worldwide

Estimating the worldwide Internet population is, at this point in time, an inexact science. The information that is displayed on this map is compiled from a number of sources worldwide, including CommerceNet Global Partners and NUA.

The number of Internet users in Latin America will reach 29.6 million by the end of 2003, according to IDC (www.idc.com). This is more than double the projected figure for the end of 2000, which is 13.3 million users.

IDC’s aggressively optimistic predictions are based on the increasing availability and popularity of free ISP services in the region. Other factors include lower PC costs in Mexico lower Net access rates in Brazil and lower call charges in Chile and Argentina.

The biggest Latin American market in 1999 was Brazil, with 41 percent of total users in the region. Mexico had 21 percent of users, Argentina had 10 percent and Chile and Colombia had 6 percent each. Venezuela had 5 percent and the remaining 12 percent of users were from the other countries in the region.  Source: NUA Internet Surveys, Mar 21 2000:  http://www.nua.ie

Projected Internet Use

Computer Industry Almanac reports an expected,

• 259 million online users worldwide by year-end 1999
• By 2000 the number is expected to reach 349 million
• 490 million Internet users by year-end 2002
• Over 765 million by year-end 2005

They also report by 2002, the US will have 1/3 of total Internet users and will decline to 27% at year-end 2005. (Nov. 1999)

According to Computer Economics, an expected 213 million online users worldwide by 2001 and by 2005, the number is expected to increase to 350 million. (Jan. 1999)

NUA reports that 60% of the world online population will be outside the US by 2003. (Nov. 1999)

Source: CommerceNet, 1999 http://www.commerce.net