Last Updated- Jun 14, 2009 2:00 - - 0 Comments


Global internet users to hit 4.8 billion in three years

internet-2The number of internet users across the world is expected to reach 4.8 billion of the world’s population, the man referred to as the ‘father of the internet’, Vint Cerf has said on the BBC Business Day show monitored by ghanabusinessnews.com.

The man who developed the TCP/IP protocols in 1976 which provided the basic messaging framework which allows different computers to communicate with each other and paved the way for the World Wide Web (www), told the BBC that while it is estimated that there are 1.7 billion internet users in the world currently, he thinks the number is actually larger than that and would grow in three to four years.

Dr. Cerf said the recent influx of mobiles into the telecom environment, some fraction of which are internet enabled have grown the number of internet users to approximately 2.4 billion out of a world population of 6.5 billion. Admitting he was guessing, he said mobile gadgets consist about 20% of internet enabled equipment in the world.

He said, very soon even home appliances will be online.  Electrical power generation and distribution systems or what is called the smartgrid would be able to interact with home appliances and cause them to stop drawing power during times of peak load.

“This is the first time in the history of electricity that we had an opportunity not only to adapt the amount of power being generated to the demand, but also adapt the demand to the available power,” he said.

Dr. Cert said he is confident that within the next three years “we would reach 75 % to 80% internet penetration worldwide, and after that it would be hard to tell.”

And that is about 4.8 billion people worldwide connected to the internet.

Dr. Cert said this figure is his expectation within the next three years.

He however, added that many of these technologies don’t penetrate 200%, saying television has more penetration than mobiles.

Dr. Cert said there is a 3.5 billion penetration of mobiles, but that means also that some individual users have more than one mobile device.

There are mobile, broadband and very soon fibre optic internet alternatives, making access to the internet pervasive.

With questions of privacy, targeted advertising, censorship and political influence arising with the use of the internet, he was asked if he is worried or proud of his invention, as ‘father of the internet’.

He said “I have to say that as you watch the entire world’s population slowly come online with a great desire to share information, it’s been very exciting to realize that there are so many people on the planet who want their information to be discoverable and accessible and useful to other people. So I will say, I’m very proud of the fact that so many other people have decided to help extend the internet to make it run faster and to make it go to places that none other has gone before.”

Adding, “on the other hand because it is global and accessible and available to the general public, we also see abuses on the network. I regret those but I don’t think it is escapable. Any technology of this generality has the possibility of being abused, and this is something that we have to cope with.”

Meanwhile, as at September 2008, Internet penetration in Ghana was estimated to be a mere 2.7 per cent as compared to 5.3 per cent in Africa.
And according to statistics, only 1.5 million of Ghana’s estimated 22 million population have access to the internet.

The introduction of mobile internet by the mobile phone companies this year, however, is expected to increase penetration exponentially, as 50% of the population is connected to mobile telephony.

Very soon the country with its sub-regional neighbours would be interconnected with undersea fibre optic. This development is expected to increase internet connectivity and access in Ghana.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

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