The internet at the end of 2018: over 4 billion users - UPGRADE 100 News
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The internet at the end of 2018: over 4 billion users

A new report from Hootsuite and We Are Social reveals that more and more people across the world connect to the internet. From a total population of 7.655 billion there are 4.176 billion internet users.

Millions of people across Africa and South Asia came online for the first time in the past three months, with almost all of these new users accessing the internet solely via mobile devices. [source]

There are:

  • 397 billion active social media users
  • 118 billion unique mobile users
  • 179 billion active mobile social users

To emphasize the importance of the mobile in the internet’s expansion, here’s some cold numbers: from those 4.176 billion people connected to the internet, 3.908 billion people are active mobile internet users. That means 51% of total population.

Who has the fastest internet connection? The situation hasn’t changed much in the last year and there still is a big variation between the fixed and mobile connections.

So, with 189.38 MBPS, Singapore is the leader when it comes to the fastest fixed internet connection. Iceland and Hong Kong are making the podium while Romania sits on #4, right in front of South Korea and USA.

On the other hand, Norway leads the fastest mobile internet connection ranking, with 63.13 MBPS, followed by Qatar and United Arab Emirates.

This is how the internet traffic is shared by device:

  • 1% on laptops & desktops (a +2% year-on-year change)
  • 6% on mobile phones (a -1% year-on-year change)
  • 2% on tablet devices (a -5% year-on-year change)
  • 1% on other devices (a -71% year-on-year change)