Amazing to think about the numbers of people around the world who not only have internet access but also have high speed broadband connections. The United States still has the highest number of broadband connections, but the trends indicate that China will surpass it later this year. South Korea remains in the lead in terms of the percentage of its population with high speed connections. Even Great Britain (not in the top ten list) has 55% of its population online.

The Guardian reports the latest statistics:

Almost 300 million people worldwide are now accessing the internet using fast broadband connections, fuelling the growth of social networking services such as MySpace and generating thousands of hours of video through websites such as YouTube.

There are more than 1.1 billion of the world’s estimated 6.6 billion people online and almost a third of them are now accessing the internet on high-speed lines. According to the internet consultancy Point Topic, 298 million people had broadband at the end of March and that is already estimated to have shot over 300 million. The statistics, however, paint a picture of a divided digital world.

Amazing to think back to what these numbers were 10 years ago and to ponder what they will be in another decade.

The complete story from The Guardian: “China catches up on US for fast internet as Africa gets left behind”