::fibreculture:: stats?

[mike hayes]

I find the talk on numbers interesting. There is much noise about the stats
of ICTs, but people always focus on growth, not absolute numbers. Very small
things can grow fast, but this still does not make them big.

So around 10% of the population has web access and of this around 7% is US
and Europe. It is hardly a global phenomena, rather a cosmopolitan one (the
wealthy elite).

However, around 2 billion people have never made a telephone call, about 2
billion people don't have electricity, and nearly 3 billion live on less
that $US2 a day, and 1.5 billion people are illiterate.

If you take a country like Bangladesh with 50% illiteracy and 40% in
absolute poverty, and also where 25 % of the population is still in primary
school you can see some of the problems of getting widespread internet use.

mike hayes