CTO/05
2026
WHY LIFTING MORE INTO CONNECTIVITY IS GETTING INCREASINGLY HARDER – THE PARETO PRINCIPLE
There is a useful piece of arithmetic here. The Pareto principle, the rough rule that the first 80 per cent of any goal takes 20 per cent of the effort while the last 20 per cent takes the remaining 80, fits the Internet connectivity curve almost too well, see Figure 1.1. The world reached roughly 67.5 per cent online by the end of 2024. We have not yet crossed the 80 per cent line that marks the start of the truly hard work. By this logic, well over 80 per cent of the total effort still lies ahead of us.
FIGURE 1.1 – THE PARETO PRINCIPLE (ADAPTED FROM THOMAS VATO[1])
This changes how we should read recent history. Around 200 million people came online – not necessarily meaningfully - between 2024 and 2026. At that pace, connecting the remaining 2.2 billion would mathematically take close to a quarter of a century, pushing into 2050 and well beyond the UN's 2030 deadline. And the pace will not hold, because each successive 100 million is harder and more expensive to be connected than the last. Africa, the least connected continent, also has the fastest growing population. The target is moving away from us. The 2030 universal connectivity pledge, as currently framed, will not be met for most developing Commonwealth members. Accepting that is not defeatism, rather it frees the setting targets that countries can actually be held to.
https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/pareto-principle-the-framework-of- efficiency-e84f25a0dccc
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