CTO/05
2026
The 2.6 or 2.2 billion figure also flatters us. Sitting just above that offline population is another group of around 2+ billion people who are counted as connected but who are nothing of the sort in any practical (or meaningful) sense. The ITU's own measurement approach treats someone as an internet user if they have been online once in the previous three months. By that standard, a person who borrows a neighbour's phone once a quarter joins the ranks of the connected. Add the genuinely offline to the barely connected and the picture changes sharply. More than half the world is either completely excluded or not meaningfully included. I strongly argue in my recent (2025) book - The Connectivity Crisis: Half the World Left Behind, published by the University of Strathclyde - that meaningful connectivity implies regular, dependable, and effective access to the Internet - one that enables the users to benefit from online resources and services anytime, anyplace, anywhere and affordably. This hardly translates to once in three months
This matters for the Commonwealth because the gap is concentrated in exactly the member states the CTO exists to serve. In high income countries 93 per cent of people are online according to the ITU. In low-income countries the figure is 27 per cent, and most of those connections run on expensive, usage-based mobile data that prices out regular use. Counting the barely connected as connected lets policymakers report progress while the lived reality on the ground barely moves.
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