As of February 2025, India was the country with the largest offline population worldwide. The South Asian country had over 651 million people without internet connection. China ranked second, with around 311.9 million people not connected to the internet. Despite these large shares of the disconnected population in these countries, China and India ranked first and second, respectively, as countries with the highest number of internet users worldwide. Internet access in Africa In 2023, Africa lagged behind other global regions regarding internet penetration rate, as only 37 percent of the continent’s population accessed the web. In contrast, around 91 percent of Europe’s population were internet users. This is heavily influenced by the infrastructure development in the region. However, some improvements are forecasted, as by 2028, the internet penetration rate in Africa will be at an estimated 48.15 percent. Global internet access challenges: disruptions and restrictions Government internet shutdowns around the world are another challenge for internet access. Between 2015 and the first half of 2023, 172 local internet connection disruptions occurred due to protests globally. Moreover, according to a 2023report on internet freedom, almost four out of ten global internet users were deprived of essential freedoms on online platforms. In 2023, 76 new restrictions on internet usage were implemented worldwide. Asia led in imposing these restrictions, accounting for approximately 55 cases across various countries in the region.

Between January 2012 and February 2024, there were 805 government-imposed internet shutdowns across India, resulting in the highest number of internet blocks in the world so far. According to the Freedom House Index ratings of 2019, India was labelled a partially free democracy and scored a mediocre 55 points out of 100 on the freedom of internet parameters.

Cost of shutdowns

In 2019, India’s forced internet blackouts lasted well over four thousand hours, resulting in an economic loss of over 1.3 billion U.S. dollars, third in the world’s most economically affected countries, after Iraq and Sudan. The report added that India’s internet blackouts tend to be highly targeted and at times they are down to the level of individual blacklisting. Some internet shutdowns are imposed for a few hours in just a few city districts, while others are a blanket restriction of all internet services across larger regions in the country. As such, the report warns that the full economic impact is likely to be much higher than the stated figures.

Justifications for internet shutdowns

In 2016, the United Nations declared internet access as a basic human right. Despite this, many governments including India seem to be normalizing internet shutdowns. Public safety was the most common government justification to enable internet shutdowns in 2018, followed by national security. Fake news or hate speech, usually called disinformation, was ranked third. However, official justifications for shutdowns rarely seemed to match actual causes, which frequently included political instability and civilian protests.

As of February 2023, software or configuration errors were the most common root cause of third-party vendor-related outages worldwide. Such issues were detected in 65 percent of outage incidents. Networking and connectivity issues were common for around 53 percent of the outage incidents.

A report on local news in the United States revealed that 3,200 weekly publications closed or merged with other papers between 2004 and 2024, with the number of non-daily papers falling from over 7.4 thousand to less than 4.6 thousand in that period. Dailies also saw a decline, with just over 1,000 in publication in 2024. Whilst this is evidently bad news for papers now out of print, the loss of local news also impacts communities reliant upon it. News deserts: the state of play News deserts are counties without access to or with very limited access to local news. As the number of local newspapers in publication continues to fall, many smaller, rural communities are left without coverage of their immediate area. Although some companies are attempting to preserve local news, many outlets have been merged, acquired by investors outside the industry, or have dissolved completely. Impact on the consumer Local news is overall more trusted than national news, and not only for its impartiality. Looking at U.S. opinions of national news, over 70 percent believe that national news has the resources to report the news accurately, however only around a third feel that national news operates in the interests of its readers or can be relied upon for important information. Without local news outlets, audiences in non-urban areas without relevant coverage may choose not to engage with news at all if they feel their only options are those they do not trust and do not represent them – a bad sign for publishers given that news avoidance is already on the rise.