- The number of people connected to the
Internet will balloon before the new millennium, according to a report
from the United Nations.
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- The UN's annual economic and social survey
of Asia, released Thursday, said that more than 200 million people will
be connected to the Internet by the year 2000.
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- The 250-page report said that at the
end of 1998 between 25 million and 30 million users were online in more
than 140 countries connected to the Internet. It also suggested that the
Internet may offer new economic opportunities for a troubled Asia.
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- The UN Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacific in Singapore authored the report, but did not
document how the projections were derived and couldn't be reached for
comment.
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- Analysts say the UN's figures greatly
underestimate the current number of Net users.
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- Sam Weerahandi, senior scientist at Telcordia
Technologies -- a market-research firm in Morristown, New Jersey, that
produces daily estimates of the growth of the Internet -- estimated close
to 183 million people are online.
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- Weerahandi calculated 66 million Internet
users in Europe, 87 million in North America, and 30 million in Asia.
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- "Asia has the most potential to
grow, but it is slowing down," he said. "Most households in
North America and Europe have access already. It's still growing also,
but at a diminished rate."
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- Vint Cerf, chairman of the board of trustees
for the Internet Society, spoke at a privacy conference on Wednesday and
predicted 300 million people would be connected by the end of 2000, citing
a report in USA Today.
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- Cerf told the Computers, Freedom, and
Privacy conference in Washington that 150 million users are connected
worldwide, and that figure will double by the end of 2000. The number
of Internet connections has been doubling every year for the last 11 years,
he said.
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- But for the Internet to keep growing,
access to technology must be both affordable and unrestricted, Cerf said.
Less than half of the world's populations have ever made a phone call.
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- The US Census Bureau estimates the population
of the world will exceed 6 billion people by 2000.
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