Digital Divide Some Facts

There is an ever widening gap between info-rich and info-poor countries

As Scott an Autrey put it ,"while the developed countries are becoming info-wealthier,the developing countries continue to fight an uphill battle ,lacking the resources to catch up with the developed world .Roughly 80% of the world population lives in developing countries,but they recieve only 20% of the global income.Also ,these countries hold only 10%of the telecommunications infrastructure including Internet access.

The number of telephone connections per 1000 people varies from 712 in Norway and 682 in the US to 27 for india and 3 for Bangladesh.As regards the technological status ,about 33%of the world's population has no access to a telephone as yet ,and only 5% of the population has Internet connection.There are only 14 million phone lines in all of Africa ,which has a population of about 740 miilion people ,and 99.5% of them are not connected to the internet.

According to NUA ,in mid 2002, the total number of Internet users in the world was 580.78 million with Europe having 185.83 million users ,Canada and USA182.67 miilion,Asia /Pacific 167.86million ,followed by Latin America (32.99), Africa(6.31 million)and Middle East (5.12).It is not surprising that one in every three Americans uses the Internet ,but one in every 10,000 people in India and Bangladesh ,and pakistan does so.