ITU 2025 Report Reveals Six Billion Online Users
Six billion people across the world are now connected to the internet, representing roughly three-quarters of the global population, but 2.2 billion people remain offline, exposing the deepening fault lines of global digital inequality, according to the International Telecommunication Union’s Facts and Figures 2025 report.
The landmark figure represents an increase of more than 240 million new internet users in 2025 alone, up from 5.8 billion recorded in 2024, marking one of the most significant single-year expansions in global connectivity on record.
ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin cautioned that raw connectivity numbers alone do not tell the full story. “In a world where digital technologies are essential to so much of daily life, everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from being online,” she said. “Today’s digital divides are increasingly defined by speed, reliability, affordability, and skills.”
The report, widely regarded as the most authoritative annual snapshot of global digital access, also marks a historic milestone in mobile technology. For the first time, 5G subscriptions account for approximately one-third of all global mobile broadband subscriptions, translating to around three billion users worldwide. Despite this growth, 5G network coverage reaches only 55 per cent of the global population, with access distributed starkly along income lines — 84 per cent coverage in high-income countries against a mere four per cent in low-income nations.
The data gap is equally stark in consumption patterns. Users in high-income countries consume nearly eight times more mobile data than their counterparts in low-income nations, a disparity the ITU describes as a growing dimension of digital exclusion that goes beyond mere access.
Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, warned that bridging the divide demands more than infrastructure expansion. He stressed that achieving universal and meaningful connectivity will require sustained investment in affordability, digital skills, and reliable data systems.
The report further identifies rural populations, women, and residents of low-income countries as disproportionately concentrated among the offline population, with income, gender, age, and geography all functioning as structural barriers to digital inclusion.
The findings arrive at a critical juncture for global digital policy, as governments and development organisations intensify efforts to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, several of which depend on broadband access as a prerequisite for delivering education, healthcare, financial services, and civic participation.
The ITU’s findings signal that while the trajectory of global connectivity remains upward, the pace and quality of that progress remain deeply uneven — raising urgent questions about who gets left behind as the digital economy accelerates.