Wired News (http://www.wired.com) Net Users to Top 200 Million by Leander Kahney 2:15 p.m. 8.Apr.99.PDT The number of people connected to the Internet will balloon before the new millennium, according to a report from the United Nations. The UN's annual economic and social survey of Asia, released Thursday, said that more than 200 million people will be connected to the Internet by the year 2000. The 250-page report said that at the end of 1998 between 25 million and 30 million users were online in more than 140 countries connected to the Internet. It also suggested that the Internet may offer new economic opportunities for a troubled Asia. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific <http://www.unescap.org/> in Singapore authored the report, but did not document how the projections were derived and couldn't be reached for comment. Analysts say the UN's figures greatly underestimate the current number of Net users. Sam Weerahandi, senior scientist at Telcordia Technologies -- a market-research firm in Morristown, New Jersey [USA], that produces daily estimates of the growth of the Internet -- estimated close to 183 million people are online. Weerahandi calculated 66 million Internet users in Europe, 87 million in North America, and 30 million in Asia. "Asia has the most potential to grow, but it is slowing down," he said. "Most households in North America and Europe have access already. It's still growing also, but at a diminished rate." Vint Cerf, chairman of the board of trustees for the Internet Society, spoke at a privacy conference on Wednesday and predicted 300 million people would be connected by the end of 2000, citing a report in USA Today. Cerf told the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Washington that 150 million users are connected worldwide, and that figure will double by the end of 2000. The number of Internet connections has been doubling every year for the last 11 years, he said. But for the Internet to keep growing, access to technology must be both affordable and unrestricted, Cerf said. Less than half of the world's populations have ever made a phone call. The US Census Bureau estimates the population of the world will exceed 6 billion people by 2000. ---------------------------------- Send mail for the 'huridocs-tech' list to 'huridocs-tech@hrea.org'. Mail administrative request to 'majordomo@hrea.org'. For additional assistance, send mail to: 'owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org'. Archives of previous messages posted to the list can be found at: http://www.human-rights.net/huridocs-tech.
[Reply to this message] [Start a new topic] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index] [Subject Index] [List Home Page] [HREA Home Page]