Category Archives: Telecommunications

Internet Population and Penetration by Country

An estimated one third of the world population is connected to the internet while the remaining two thirds do not have have access to it yet, according to the website Information Geographies.

As shown in the map above, the distortion in the size of China points out the fact that it is the country with the largest number of internet users, roughly 500 million people. China is followed by the United States, India, and Japan, among others.

Countries with the largest internet penetration, the percentage of the population of each country connected to the internet, include Canada, Great Britain, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, South Korea, Germany, Finland, Qatar, and New Zealand.

Source: Information Geographies: Internet Population and Penetration

Freedom on the Net 2013

Freedom House has conducted a study on internet freedom in 60 countries across the globe.

What the authors of the study found is that global internet freedom has deteriorated in the last three years as a consequence of the increase of laws and regulations that try to limit free speech on the web.

An estimated 34 countries have seen a decline in internet freedom since 2012 including Vietnam, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Venezuela. On the other hand, 16 countries have seen an improvement in internet freedom, among them Morocco, Burma, and Tunisia. Despite those improvements, limits on internet freedom are still rampant in many countries that make the list, where censorship, threats, and murder of bloggers and users who post information governments see as a threat continues.

Source: Freedom House: Freedom on the Net 2013

Most Visited Website per Country

Google, Facebook, and Chinese search engine Baidu are the top three most visited websites in the world.

Using freely available website traffic statistics from Alexa, the authors of the map above found that most people in North America, Europe, South East Asia, and Oceania prefer Google. Due to the large number of Internet users in China and South Korea combined, an estimated one billion users, Baidu is the most visited website behind Google. Facebook comes in third with an estimated 280 million users spread from Latin America to the Middle East.

Source: Information Geographies: Age of Internet Empires

The United States Leads in Mobile Monetization

According to Statista global revenue from mobile advertising almost doubled in 2012, increasing from $4.9 billion back in 2011 to $9.1 billion.

In North America alone, the amount spent on mobile ads per mobile subscription reached $9.39 on 2012 compared to $4.53 on the previous year. That fact puts North America as the leader in mobile advertising worldwide. Western Europe follows with $2.91 spent on mobile ads per mobile subscription, more than double the amount spent on the previous year.

U.S. Mobile Phone Subscribers Talk the Most

On average, U.S. mobile subscribers talk on the phone 356 minutes, or roughly 6 hours per month. That number is double that of the Turkey, and 4.5 times that of Germany. That estimate is the highest among selected OECD countries.

Canadians are not far behind. The outgoing traffic per mobile subscriber is an average 345 minutes (5 hours and 45 minutes) in a single month.

Source: Statista: Americans Talk on Their Mobile Phones More Than Anyone Else

The United States vs. China

The Guardian created this comparison of the U.S. and China, comparing several indicators such as GDP growth, GDP per capita, carbon emissions, exports, literacy rate, unemployment rate, military expenditure, outdoor pollution, to name a few.

The US is ahead of China in terms of literacy rate, number of internet users, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, unemployment rate, GDP per capita, market capitalization, and social media. On the other hand, China is ahead of the U.S. in terms of exports, GDP growth, number of people, carbon emission, and outdoor pollution.

While the U.S. has the largest deficit in its current account, China has the largest surplus.

World Internet Users by Region

Of the 7 billion people in the world, only 2.4 billion are connected to the Internet, that is roughly 34% of the population as of 2012.

Internet penetration is the highest in North America (79%), followed by Oceania (68%), Europe (63%), and Latin America (43%).

Source: Statista: Only a Third of the World’s Population Is Online

Internet Connectivity in the United States

As part of the PBS series America Revealed, this aerial visualization shows the patterns of internet distribution in the United States. We can see that the regions with highest levels of internet connectivity include the Northeast, and parts of the South and Midwest, followed by the Pacific West.

For additional interesting aerial visualizations, such as the distribution of the unemployed, electricity network routes, public transportation paths, U.S. imports and exports of beef patterns, the distribution of the population in towns and cities, etc., visit: The Roosevelt’s – Aerial Data Visualisation Reveals Life In The United States.

Map of Internet Activity

click here to see the animation

Someone hacked thousands of computers all around the world in order to create a map of internet activity in the course of a day.

In this map from FastCo.Design, the red dots show peak internet activity around the world at different times of the day, while the blue dots show base traffic. Some interesting conclusions point to the fact that nighttime affects the U.S. and Europe very little, due to the fact that permanent internet connectivity is available.

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