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Even in 2020, Internet will be out of reach for over 3.6bn people

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Do you know that despite all the progress being made in global connectivity, by 2020 there will still be over 3.6 billion people not using the internet, the majority of whom will be lower income and/or in rural areas. Cisco's  internet traffic growth forecast says that for the majority of these 3.6 billion people, internet service will be unaffordable or internet service providers may not find it commercially feasible to build access infrastructure in their regions because low economic returns to their investment.

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The Visual Networking Forecast (VNI) tracks internet growth, underpinned by growing internet users, IP-connected devices, network traffic speeds and data-rich applications.

This year, the report highlights a critical milestone in the internet’s overall development: for the first time, the VNI is forecasting over 4 billion people will be using the internet by 2020. But despite this humongous figure, there will still be billions of people who lie outside this spectrum of digital connectivity.

According to the report, by the end of 2016, total global internet traffic will surpass one zettabyte, (1 zettabyte is equal to 1 trillion gigabytes). By 2020, that figure will more than double as total internet traffic will reach 2.3 zettabytes.

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While forecasting such large numbers is incredibly complex, historical growth rates have been within 10 percent of their forecast; the 2011 forecast for the 2010-2015 period was even closer (31.8 percent growth forecast versus the actual growth rate of 31.6 percent for that time period). One significant factor in this growth is the increase in internet users: over 1.1 billion new internet users will be connected, rising from 3.0 billion in 2015 to 4.1 billion in 2020.

The biggest internet user growth will occur in low and middle-income countries in Asia where nearly 700 million new internet users will connect, primarily driven by India and China.

As a region, Africa, and the Middle East has the fastest growing population of internet users with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.8 percent. Over 178 million new users will connect in the region. Central and South America will also see a substantial rise, with over 109 million new users connected over the five-year time period.

For high-income countries, the VNI forecast points to a current adoption rate of 89 percent in North America and 81 percent in Western Europe.

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