Headline, May 13 2022/ STUDENTS : ''' '' LIMTED INTERNET LIGHTS '' '''

STUDENTS : 

''' '' LIMTED INTERNET

 LIGHTS '' '''

MICROSOFT -FACEBOOK- GOOGLE - !WOW! : Tech companies have various projects to help expand internet access to tailor their apps for countries where millions of people may be going online for the first time.

The number of people subscribing to Netflix is Declining. Until recently, Facebook was shrinking, too.

THEY and other global-spanning internet companies share a challenge : the untapped potential in the billions of people who are not online, at all.

More than four in 10 people in the world, which works out to more than three billion people, do not use the Internet at home or on their phones, according to the most recently available estimates from the World Bank and United Nations, from 2019.

IN SOME of the world's most-populated countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, a majority of people are not online.

Even after a major surge in online access in India in recent years, roughly 60 percent of Indians do not use the Internet. Close to half of the people in Indonesia - the world's fourth largest country - are not online, either. For comparison, about 10 percent of Americans and one-quarter of Brazilians are not online.

The tech world is not ignoring the gap between the Internet haves and have-nots, and the number of disconnected people is shrinking.

But as digital services strive to reach even more users, their ambitions are held back by the number of those still offline or with subpar service that prevents bingeing on Netflix, surfing YouTube or madly scrolling through Instagram.

There is no easy way past the complex economic, cultural, technical and policy barriers to bringing more of the world's citizens online. Advocates of expanding Internet use say that being connected is an economic engine and increasingly a necessity of modern life. An Internet connection is also a minimum condition for Internet companies to reach potential customers.

I'm not saying that if 100 percent of the 1.4 billion people in India suddenly started using the Internet, they would all become Netflix subscribers.

Now that Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix may be close to saturation in the United States, they have all made India a priority. But their growth is capped because they can reach, at most, only the roughly 600 million Indians who are online.

[A note about China, which has the world's largest concentration of Internet users : The country blocks many popular foreign digital services, making China out of reach for Netflix, Facebook, Google and others].

Ana Maria Rodriguez, a research analyst with the advocacy group the Alliance for Affordable Internet, said that official figures of online users might drastically underestimate how many people do not have regular access to the Internet, cannot afford to go online often, have poor service or experience some combination of those problems.

She said the World Bank and U.N. counted Internet users as anyone who had gone online at least once in the past three months.

By their figures, two-thirds of people in Colombia were online as of 2019. But research from the  Alliance for Affordable Internet found that only one-quarter of Colombians had ''meaningful'' access with consistent online connections at relatively high speeds.

Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other tech companies and executives have various projects to help expand Internet access or tailor their apps for countries where millions of people may be going online for the first time. Rodriguez, whose group receives funding from tech companies, said that doing even more could help billions of people - and corporations' bottom lines.

''It's in their interest to reach these people,'' Rodriguez told me, referring to the global Internet companies.

When I first started to write about technology more than a decade ago, I regularly asked executives if there were a limit to their growth because so many people were not online, and service stank for many people, even in rich countries like the United States. I got a lot of blank stares.

MAYBE they were right not to make the issue a high priority. Many more people have been connected in those years. Facebook and Spoitfy are not experts in building mobile Internet towers or tearing down social and financial obstacles to getting more people online.

But we're entering a period in which easy growth is gone for many successful Internet companies. To keep reaching more people, they may need to think differently about the billions who have yet to be connected.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Internet and Future, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Shira Ovide.

With respectful dedication to The Internet Giants, Leaders, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - for every subject in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless