The UN’s goal of universal access, defined as 90 per cent of people being online, may not be reached until 2050 or later. In December, the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reported that more than half of the world’s population is online.

According to the UN, “Parts of the world will be excluded from the Internet for decades to come without major efforts to boost education, online literacy and broadband infrastructure,” it said. “If there is any kind of faltering in the rate of people coming online, which it appears that there is, then we’ll have a real challenge in getting 70 per cent, 80 per cent or 90 per cent connected,” said Adrian Lovett, CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation. “The only reason we have 50 per cent online is that most of the developed world is so far ahead,” said Sonia Jorge, the Alliance for Affordable Internet executive director. “It puts the developing world in a worse place, in a situation that is even more urgent,” Jorge said.

Many rural and remote places remain offline, where the costs of installing mobile Internet towers and other infrastructure can be five times higher than in urban areas. According to Jorge, investment by telecoms operators has either stalled or declined in recent years, and what investment exists is often inefficient, with funds poorly allocated to reach the most people. “Given the recent declining levels of growth in Internet use and high costs of Internet access to significant levels of low-income populations around the world, it is possible that we will only reach universal access in 2050 or later,” she said. “Today, almost every service can be provided over the Internet,” she added. “Health advice, education, e-commerce, all these things. And the divide is growing bigger because more services are moving online. We have a moral obligation not to leave anyone behind,” Jorge added.