Native English Speakers No Longer Web Majority

Brian Krebs
Newsbytes News Network

November 14, 2001

For the first time in the history of the World Wide Web, native English
speakers no longer dominate the Internet, thanks to a surge of more
than 100 million new Internet users in 2001, a report has
found.

The third annual State of the Internet Report,
produced by the U.S. Internet Council (USIC) and International
Technology and Trade Associates, Inc. (ITTA), found the new
users—mainly from the South Pacific region—helped shrink the
share of native English speakers online to roughly 45 percent of the
estimated total of 500 million Web users.

Within the United States, 59 percent of households have home Internet access, a 15 percent increase over last year.

The report also details significant progress in efforts to eradicate the "digital divide" that persists along racial, gender, and economic lines. Women now make up 52 percent of U.S. Internet users, and 51 percent of African-American households are online, a 35 percent growth over 2000 and only slightly below the 60 percent penetration rate among white households.

Outside the United States, however, the digital divide is still quite wide, primarily between countries in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, the report notes.

The study highlights an increasing desire among countries to regulate the Internet at the local and regional level, as nations grapple with the prospect of enforcing their sovereign laws across an international medium.

"There is no question that the governments of the world have tried to legislate and regulate the Net," said Bill Myers, the president of USIC. "The result, where they've been successful, has been pockets around the world where there is not as much innovation, and access to the Net is limited."

Afghanistan, for example, has completely banned all use of the Internet within its borders, Myers said. As part of a probe that began in April 2001, Chinese authorities have shut down more than 2,000 Internet cafes, and an additional 6,000 have been forced to suspend operations.

The Chinese government also is building a stand-alone Chinese Web that has been purged of content and opinion deemed inappropriate or subversive, effectively creating a "cyber wall" between the Internet in China and the rest of the world, the report notes.

Heightened security concerns in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks also have increased government involvement in the day-to-day affairs of the Internet, Myers said.

"If we look at what has happened over the last two months, we see a drive in the U.S. and elsewhere to bring the Internet under increasing regulation for security purposes," he said. "There has been a lot of motivation for governments to act on privacy concerns, but those concerns appear to be receding as security concerns move forward."

Governments around the world are making their presence online felt in positive ways, most notably in the form of e-government programs. Canada, Singapore, the United States, Finland, and the United Kingdom continue to lead in providing government services online.

In the realm of broadband deployment, South Korea and Canada have the highest number of broadband subscribers per capita, followed closely by the United States, Austria, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Mark Rhoads, the president of ITTA, said this year's report makes clear that economic and policy divisions in the offline world translate almost seamlessly into Internet space.

"We are realizing that as the Net becomes more a part of culture, the same fault lines that are out there in the economy and culture at large are going to manifest themselves on the Internet," he said.

See the full report on the Web site of the U.S. Internet Council.

Copyright 2001 The Washington Post Company