The International Telecommunications Union (ITU for its acronym in English) has just released the ranking of countries according to its “development index” of telecommunications and information technologies . The podium is for Denmark, Korea and Sweden. In what position is Spain? What is the first country in Latin America?
Worldwide, by the end of 2014, almost 3 billion people will be connected to the Internet , compared to 2.7 billion the previous year; in Africa, the area with mobile coverage has grown by 40% in the last year; broadband and 3G penetration already exceeds 84% in developed countries. However, not all news is good for the world of technology and telecommunications. Still some 4,300 million people around the planet do not have the possibility of connecting to the internet; the technological gap is more than evident (78% of the first world population has access to the Internet compared to 31% of the poorest countries); 450 million people live in areas where there is no mobile phone coverage.
Spain ranks 28th in the annual list of countries drawn up by the ITU according to their level of technological and communication development, far from the top five positions in the ranking: Denmark, Korea, Sweden, Iceland and the United Kingdom. The first country in Latin America is Uruguay, in position 48 followed by Costa Rica and Chile in positions 55 and 56 respectively.
If we compare the average of the countries of the different continents, Europe is the one that obtains the best score in the scale of households with an Internet connection, with an average of 78% followed by America with 57.4%, the Russian Commonwealth with a 53%, Arab countries with 36%, Asia and the Pacific with 35.9% and finally Africa with an index of 11.1%.
These data show the abysmal difference between some regions and others , despite the fact that the global average grows every year and already stands at 43.6%. However, it is true that, according to ITU data, Internet access has grown much faster in developing countries compared to developed countries (8.7% versus 3.3% respectively ).
