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

Geneva: The United Nations said Wednesday that global internet use was slowly increasing, but warned that glaring disparities in poorer regions especi...

Geneva: 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.