Global internet user rises to 3.2 bn in 2015: Facebook

The number of internet users increased globally by 300 million to 3.2 billion at the end of 2015, in part due to affordable data and rising global income, according to a report by social media giant Facebook.

"At the end of 2014, there were 2.9 billion internet users globally. By the end of 2015, this figure was predicted to have reached 3.2 billion, 43% of the world's population," said the report titled State of Connectivity 2015 on Global Access Internet.

"During 2014, lower prices for data and rising global incomes have made mobile data packages of 500MB per month affordable to 500 million more people," it said.

The highest estimates of 3G and 4G coverage indicated that 1.6 billion people lived outside the mobile broadband coverage which was an improvement as against 2 billion at the end of 2014, the report said.

"Most people connect to the internet using mobile devices, which are the only way to get online in many parts of the world. An estimated 2.7 billion people did not have mobile phone subscriptions in 2015," it added.

The progress notwithstanding, the developing world was a long way behind as far as connectivity was concerned and even as urban areas were connected, many rural areas were not, according to the report.

"In many countries, women use the internet far less than men. And even if the entire world lived within range of the necessary infrastructure, nearly a billion people remain illiterate or otherwise unable to benefit from online content," the US-headquartered company opined.

Meanwhile, Facebook said it had mapped almost 2 billion people better than any previous project. The social network's Connectivity Labs announced this week that it created new, high-resolution population-distribution maps of 20 countries, most of which are developing.

The company would not release most of the maps until later this year, however, if they were accurate, they would be the best-quality population maps ever made for most of those places.