How connected is the UK to the internet? Very, it seems. A recent report has placed Britain in 8th place in terms of the planet’s most well connected countries.
This was an improvement on last year’s figure, as the UK passed both Japan and Hong Kong in the last year.
First place is still held by South Korea, while Sweden, Iceland and Denmark all come in the following places. At the other end of the table we have Niger and the Central African Republic.
It is estimated that 40% of the people who live on the planet will be online before 2013 is out, which means 2.7 billion people. However, it has also been stated that the higher cost of going online in some countries is stopping a lot of people from having the same opportunities as those who live elsewhere.
African Countries Lagging Behind
There are 1.1 billion households in the world (give or take a few) and 90% of those who aren’t yet connected are in developing countries, with Africa representing a big percentage of that group of countries.
The research was carried out by a United Nations agency called the International Telecommunication Union. They said that the leap from the UK was largely due to the high level of competition which as now resulted in some of the lowest prices around for both broadband and mobile internet access.
In fact, at the end of 2012 80% of British homes had an internet connection, which is more than twice the rate for the planet as a whole.
