BetterOn 17 November 2025 the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency for telecommunications, published its Facts and Figures report. It contains a record and a warning, in the same sentence.
The record is easy to read. The warning is the part that gets left out.
6 billion people are online“about three-quarters of the world's population”. 2.2 billion are not.
And the ITU's own headline reads: “Global number of Internet users increases, but disparities deepen key digital divides.”
Both halves are the finding. The second one is why the first is not the whole story.
The measurementsThe five gaps, ranked
The ITU lists five persistent divides. It lists them without ranking them. Ranked, they say something the list alone does not.
The fourth is age: “82 per cent of 15-24-year-olds use the Internet, compared with 72 per cent of the rest of the population.” Ten points. The generation described everywhere as digitally native is ahead of everyone else by ten points, not by a world.
Read the order. The gap everyone talks about, generations, is the second smallest. The gap almost nobody talks about, where you live inside your own country, is four times wider. And the income gap is wider than all the others put together.
ConcentrationOne gap is not like the others
The other four describe differences inside a population. This one describes where the population is.
“96 per cent of those offline live in low- and middle-income countries.”
Not most. Not a large majority. Ninety-six per cent. Which means the remaining 4%, everyone offline in every high-income country on earth, is a rounding error in the global figure.
That does not make those 4% unimportant to the people concerned. It does mean that a global conversation about the digital divide which stays inside rich countries is discussing 4% of it.
QualityWhat happens after you are plugged in
Counting users answers one question: connected, yes or no. The 2025 report spends most of its attention on the question that comes after.
- Coverage. 5G networks cover 55% of the world's population, but “84 per cent of people in high-income countries having access to 5G, compared with only 4 per cent in low-income countries”.
- Use. “A typical user in a high-income country now generates nearly eight times more mobile data than one in a low-income country.” Same verb, “connected”, on both sides of that ratio.
- Price. The median price decreased, and “access remains unaffordable in around 60 per cent of low- and middle-income countries”.
- Skills. Most users have the basic ones; the ITU notes that the more advanced ones, “online safety, problem-solving and digital content creation”, are developing more slowly.
None of these show up in a user count. All four are the difference between having a connection and being able to use it for something.
VocabularyThe word the ITU uses instead
Institutions rarely invent expressions for nothing. This one exists because “connected” stopped measuring what it was supposed to measure.
The ITU's target is not universal connectivity. It is universal and meaningful connectivity, “reached when everyone can access the Internet with high-quality service, at an affordable cost, whenever and wherever needed”.
High quality. Affordable. Whenever. Wherever. Being plugged in is one condition out of fourand it is the only one a user count can see.
Which is why the record and the warning are not in tension. Six billion people crossed the line the old measurement draws. The report is about how much of the distance that line does not cover.
QuestionsFrequently asked questions
How many people are not connected?
2.2 billion, according to the ITU's 2025 estimate, the United Nations agency for telecommunications. The number of internet users has reached 6 billion, “about three-quarters of the world's population”. So a quarter of humanity is not online.
Where do offline people live?
The ITU gives one figure that settles it: “96 per cent of those offline live in low- and middle-income countries”. The digital divide is not spread out. It is concentrated.
If connectivity is rising, why talk about worsening?
Because they are two different measurements. The number of users is rising; the gaps between groups are widening on what comes after being plugged in, speed, reliability, price, skills. The ITU's own headline says exactly that: connectivity is progressing, and “disparities deepen key digital divides”.
Which gap is the widest?
Income, by a distance: “94 per cent of people in high-income countries use the Internet, in contrast to only 23 per cent in low-income countries”. That is 71 points. The urban-rural gap is 27, the age gap 10, the gap between women and men 6.
Is being connected enough?
The ITU does not say so. It uses a different expression, “universal and meaningful connectivity”, reached “when everyone can access the Internet with high-quality service, at an affordable cost, whenever and wherever needed”. Four conditions, only one of which is being plugged in.
Is the price falling?
Yes, and it is not enough. The ITU writes that “the median price of a data-only mobile broadband basket decreased, but access remains unaffordable in around 60 per cent of low- and middle-income countries”. Both halves of the sentence are in the same paragraph, and the second is the one quoted least.
Read nextRelated
Sources
- Internet users grow worldwide but key digital divides deepen, International Telecommunication Union, 17 November 2025
- Facts and Figures 2025, the full report, ITU
About this article. General and educational information. Every figure comes from the International Telecommunication Union's press release of 17 November 2025 presenting the Facts and Figures 2025 report, and they are global estimates, the ITU says so itself. Quoted sentences are taken from that page.
Spotted an error or an out-of-date figure? Write to us: we will correct it and re-date the article. Our texts are written with the help of artificial intelligence and checked against official sources before publication, but a figure or a definition can change without us catching it. If anything here does not match what an official body tells you, they are right.