The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has said in its latest report that with some 6 billion mobile subscriptions in use worldwide, around three-quarter of the world’s inhabitants now has access to a mobile phone.
The Asian Development Bank report said that the world was home to 7 billion people, one third of which were using the internet and 45 per cent of the world’s internet users were below the age of 25, whereas internet users in China represented almost 25 per cent of the world’s total users.
It said growth in mobile technology was driven by developing countries, which accounted for more than 80 per cent of the 660 million new subscriptions added in the previous year. The world’s top broadband economies are from Europe and Asia and the Pacific. In the Republic of Korea, mobile-broadband penetration exceeds 90 per cent.
“Rapid advances in information and communications technology (ICT) have created tremendous opportunities for economic and social gains in the world’s poorest areas,” the report added.
