ABSTRACT
The International Telecommunication Union (2010) stated that the global number of Internet users had surpassed 2 billion in 2010, of which 1.2 billion users were in developing countries. The rate of Internet access has steadily increased from 394 million to over 2 billion in just over a decade. Despite the significant increase of worldwide Internet users, global distribution of Internet access has been extremely unequal. While an estimated 71 percent of the population in developed countries had access to the Internet at the end of 2010, there was only 21 percent of the population with access in developing countries. Globally, the Internet user divide is significantly influenced by gender, age, education, and income, and there are major differences between urban and rural areas (ITU, 2011).
