Web population to expand rapidly

The number of people using the internet is expected to grow by 45 per cent to 2.2 billion users in 2013, according to new research. Asia will be responsible for the majority of growth according to Forrester Research, the analyst group responsible for the Global Online Population Forecast report. The countries with the most people online today are China, the US, Japan, Brazil and Germany. By 2013 Forrester predicts that China will have more people online than any other country. India is expected to climb into third place, displacing Japan and Brazil. China surfed past the US last year to take top place with most users online, with more 300 million people now using the web there. In the UK, the number of internet users will grow from 41.3 million (69 per cent of the population) to 48.7 million (81 per cent) in 2013. The Middle East and Africa will post the fastest growth in internet users; currently these two regions only have eight per cent of the global total but this will rise to 13 per cent by 2013. This week East Africa joined the global broadband network when an when an undersea fibre-optic cable linking it to networks in Europe and India was deployed.