Global Internet Report 2014

Global Internet Report 2014
Internet Society
Open and Sustainable Access for All

Contents
Foreword
Executive Summary
Author’s notes
Introduction
01. This is your Internet: Trends and Growth
02. Open and Sustainable Internet
03. Benefits of an Open and Sustainable Internet
04. Challenges to the Open and Sustainable Internet
05. Recommendations
Annex A. Definition of world regions
Annex B. GIUS survey 2013 methodology
References
Internet Society
14
4
6
16
18
42
64
96
128
134
135
137
144

4
More than two decades ago, the Internet Society was formed
to support the open development, evolution, and use of the
Internet for the benefit of all mankind. Over the years, we
have pursued that task with pride. We continue to be driven
by the hope and promise of the benefits the Internet can
bring to everyone.
In doing so, the Internet Society has fostered a diverse
and truly global community. Internet Society Chapters and
members represent the people of the world and the many
and varied ways they use the Internet to enrich the lives of
themselves and their peers. They use the Internet to create
communities, to open new economic possibilities, to improve
lives, and to participate in the world. We are inspired by their
stories of innovation, creativity, and collaboration.
Thanks to the Internet’s own success, we are now in an
increasingly complex era where the stakes are much higher
than before, and potential threats to the Internet’s core
principles loom larger. To protect your ability to use the
Internet for your needs – to keep it open and sustainable – we
must do more to measure impacts and present the strengths
of the open Internet model in more compelling ways, to
convince policy makers, influencers, and the general public
of the importance of our mission.
To this end, I am pleased to launch this, the first in an
annual series of Global Internet Reports. With this report,
the Internet Society introduces a new level of integrated
analysis, measurement, and reporting to Internet governance
discussions at all levels.
The Global Internet Reports will become a showcase of
topics that are at the heart of the Internet Society’s work
about the future of the Internet, weaving together the many
threads of the diverse multistakeholder Internet community.
Foreword

Global Internet Report 2014 | 5
I commend our Chief Economist, Michael Kende, for his vision
and hard work in creating this report, and I thank everyone
else who committed their time and expertise to help.
The Internet Society is pleased to present our first report
and trust that the Global Internet Reports will become an
important contribution to the continued progress of Internet
development.
Kathy Brown
President and CEO

6
Introduction
The Internet Society (ISOC) is a global not-for-profit
organization founded in 1992 to provide leadership in
Internet related standards, development and policy, with the
guiding vision that ‘The Internet is for Everyone’. This report
is the first in a series meant to celebrate the progress of the
Internet, highlight trends, and illustrate the principles that will
continue to sustain the growth of the Internet.
This report focuses on the open and sustainable Internet
– what we mean by that, what benefits it brings, and how
to overcome threats that prevent those of us already online
from enjoying the full benefits, and what keeps non-users
from going online in the first place. Given the rapid pace of
change, it is important to solidify and spread the benefits of
the open Internet, rather than taking them for granted.
This is your Internet: Trends and Growth
Against a backdrop of relentless growth, the Internet
continues to change and evolve, as shown in the timeline
below. It is remarkable that only in 2004 did fixed broadband
connections exceed dial-up access, the number of users only
exceeded one billion late in 2005, or that the first smartphone
was only introduced in 2007. How many of us could have
imagined back then that mobile broadband would so soon
surpass fixed, developing country users surpass developed
country users, video traffic surpass all other, and that we
would be approaching three billion users in early 2015?
Throughout this process of constant change, the fundamental
nature of the Internet has remained constant. The Internet is
a uniquely universal platform that uses the same standards
in every country, so that every user can interact with every
other user in ways unimaginable 10 years ago, regardless
of the multitude of changes taking place. This report shows
why it is important to maintain, and strengthen, the open and
sustainable Internet that has enabled not just the growth, but
also the evolution of the Internet.
Executive Summary

2003
2005
2011
2013
2006
2014
2007
2009
2015
2010
FIRST WORLD
SUMMIT ON THE
INFORMATION
SOCIETY (WSIS)
GENEVA
12/032004
2012
2008
FIXED BROADBAND
EXCEEDS
DIAL-UP
07/04
TUNIS
AGENDA
11/05
1BILLION
INTERNET
USERS
10/05
FASTER
DSL
VDSL2 RELEASED
IPHONE LAUNCH
06/07
OF THE WORLD’S
INTERNET USERS
DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES HAVE
MORE THAN
50%
01/08
FIRST 4G
NETWORK
LAUNCH
12/09
MOBILE BROADBAND
EXCEEDS
FIXED
02/10
WIKIPEDIA
1 BILLION EDITS
04/10
FIXED BROADBAND
SUBSCRIBERS
500
MILLION
07/10
2BILLION
INTERNET
USERS
11/10
OF INTERNET USERS
HAVE A MOBILE
BROADBAND
CONNECTION
50%
10/11
VIDEO
MAKES UP
OF INTERNET
TRAFFIC
50%
06/12
OF THE WORLD’S
MOBILE BROADBAND
SUBSCRIBERS
DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES HAVE
MORE THAN
50%
09/12
1BILLION
INTERNET
HOSTS
09/13
3
BILLION
INTERNET
USERS
SMARTPHONES 50%
OF ALL MOBILE
PHONES
01/14
FASTER
CABLE
DOCSIS 3.0
RELEASED
08/06
Fixed broadband
Usage
Mobile broadband
Users
Regions
Internet Governance
Date (Month/Year)
TIMELINE OF MILESTONES IN DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERNET

8
What is the Open and Sustainable Internet?
The Internet has changed the world. Open access to the
Internet has revolutionized the way individuals communicate
and collaborate, entrepreneurs and corporations conduct
business, and governments and citizens interact. At
the same time, the Internet established a revolutionary
open model for its own development and governance,
encompassing all stakeholders.
The development of the Internet relied critically on
establishing an open process. Fundamentally, the Internet
is a ‘network of networks’ whose protocols are designed
to allow networks to interoperate. In the beginning, these
networks represented different academic, government, and
researchcommunitieswhosemembersneededtocooperate
to develop common standards and manage joint resources.
Later, as the Internet was commercialized, vendors and
operators joined the open protocol development process
and helped unleash the unprecedented era of growth and
innovation.
The cooperation between the communities of interest was
itself made possible by tools that were enabled by this
inter-network – email, file transfers, and then the World
Wide Web. Thus came a vital feedback loop between the
users of the network and the stewards, who were one and
the same. This loop has ensured that the openness of the
process developing the network is reflected in the open
usage of the network, and vice versa.
USER
INTERNET
GOVERNANCE
STANDARD-
SETTING
IGF
(2006) NET
MUNDIAL
(2014)
TUNIS
AGENDA
(2005)
W3C
(1994)
ICCB
(1979)
> IAB
(1992)
IEEE
(1980)
IETF
(1986)
IRTF
(1986)
WSIS
(2003)
ISOC
(1992)
ICANN
(1998)

The spirit of collaboration that lies at the foundation of the
Internet has extended from standards to a multi-stakeholder
governance model for shared Internet resources for naming
and addressing. The multi-stakeholder approach now also
covers policy in a variety of organizations and processes at
the international and national level, creating an infinite loop
of continuous improvement.
To illustrate, we show how the multi-stakeholder model is
used to develop standards such as the Opus audio codec;
how it has been applied to combat spam in developing
countries; how Internet Exchange Points can be developed;
and even how a multistakeholder approach has been
adapted to provide wireless Internet access in rural India.
Benefits of an Open and Sustainable Internet
The open Internet has created a medium like no other, one
that merges the most notable characteristics of traditional
media such as broadcast and telecommunications, while
also augmenting them in ways that have revolutionized
aspects of civil society, business, and government.
TheInternetallowsthesetraditionalformsofcommunications,
but is more interactive than old-style broadcast, and more
inclusive than a conventional telephone call. As a result,
the nearly three billion Internet users are both creators of
information as well as consumers. Websites, blogs, videos,
tweets, can all be broadcast and accessed in the largest mass
medium imaginable. Audio and video calls and conferences
can be set up and received without regard to distance or
cost.
However, these changes are not just limited to traditional
media. Governments can use the Internet to deliver services
and levy taxes and, in turn, can choose to enable citizens
to elect, petition, and oversee their governments online.
Entrepreneurs not only have new markets for their goods
or services, but also a new means to raise money online
to finance their dreams. Likewise, entertainers have a new
global medium to share or sell their endeavours, while new
artists can be discovered and grow online.

10
With open access to the Internet and an appropriate enabling
environment, the resulting benefits of the Internet are limited
only by the imagination and efforts of its users. Here we
provide some examples that demonstrate the value of the
open Internet for creating benefits among its global users.
EXAMPLES OF THE OPEN AND SUSTAINABLE INTERNET
End usersGovernment Business
Education
E-government
Participation
Collaboration
Sharing
Entertainment
Innovation
E-commerce
Challenges to the Open and Sustainable Internet
The benefits of the open Internet flow from the development
and adoption of a set of underlying protocols that are in
use worldwide. These protocols help to create the base of
nearly three billion users, allowing them to communicate
with one another to generate the benefits described in the
previous section. However, while the Internet is often called
the ‘network of networks’, all networks are not created alike.
80–100%
20–40%
60–80%
40–60%
0–20%
No data available
GLOBAL INTERNET PENETRATION LEVELS IN 2012
[Source: ITU]

Creating a global network of networks based on a standard
platform is a foundational success of the Internet. That is
not to say, however, that there are not significant differences
between countries in terms of Internet access and usage.
The first, highlighted above, relates to the penetration of
Internet users between countries; the more users within a
country and in neighboring countries, the more benefits to
any other user in being online.
Further, for those users already online, the overall user
experience can differ significantly by country. Any such
differences, however, do not originate from technical
standards, but rather from government policy and economic
reality. In particular, these differences can arise at two layers
of the Internet:
• Infrastructure. Countries can differ by the affordability and
bandwidth of access networks, and by the resilience of
their international connections to other countries, based
on economic factors and policy and regulatory choices.
• Content and applications. Some governments require
network operators to filter content or block applications,
using political or legal justifications. In other cases,
content may not be available or locally relevant for
economic reasons.
While the open Internet is an unparalleled positive force for
advancement, it is not immune from economic and political
influences that act to limit benefits. An affordable and
reliable Internet is not yet a reality for the majority of people
in the world. At the same time, where access is available
it should not be taken for granted. The mere fact of being
connected does not guarantee one will be able to innovate
or freely share information and ideas; these abilities require
an enabling Internet environment, one that is based on
unrestricted openness.
Recommendations
Although the Internet is held together by a global set of
standards, we have shown here that there are divisions in the
user experience between countries. Further, in spite of the
striking, once unimaginable, growth in Internet adoption and
usage, the majority of the world population is still not online.
Addressing the challenges in the previous section will not
just improve the user experience of those currently online,

12
but will also contribute to the Internet Society’s overarching
vision, that the Internet is for Everyone.
Progress towards our vision is proceeding quickly around
the world, as access continues to grow at a significant pace.
However, much development work remains to be done to
bring the economic and social benefits of the Internet to
everyone. Further, those who are online are experiencing
significant variations in their user experience.
Fornon-Internetusers,sittingontheothersideoftheso-called
digital divide, Internet access is clearly a critical component.
With the advent of mobile broadband, which can be rolled
out faster and at lower cost than fixed broadband, access
is no longer as critical an issue for those in the new service
regions. Nonetheless, affordability remains as a significant
roadblock. However, there is evidence that among those
who have access to the Internet and are able to afford it,
there are still many who choose not to go online.
As a result, when considering how to bridge the digital
divide, it is important to differentiate those who could afford
to go online, but choose not to, from those who do not have
access or could not afford it anyway. It is also important to
consider the issues that impact those already online, such
as improved security and privacy measures. Addressing
those concerns will not just impact those already online, but
improve the experience for those considering going online.
Have Internet
already
• Resilience: Increase cross-border connectivity
• Security and privacy: Use technology to promote trust and privacy
• Content availability: Make sure content is widely and legally available
Could have
Internet
• Content access: Provide access to locally relevant content
• Content creation: Government lead in developing applications and creating demand for hosting
infrastructure
Cannot have
Internet
• Access: Remove barriers to deployment, and government invests where costs are high or incomes are low
• Affordability: Remove taxes on equipment and services to lower costs, subsidize demand in targeted
fashion

Conclusion
As we near three billion Internet users, it is appropriate to
step back and marvel at the speed of adoption and changes
that have taken place to date. It is clear that the open Internet
model, which helped to fuel the growth and navigate all the
bumps in the road, continues to be the best way to ensure
that the Internet remains sustainable and continues to grow.
Working together – and honouring the Internet model – all
stakeholders can meet the foreseen challenges outlined in
this report – and others as they arise – to make the Internet
yet more essential to end-users’ lives as citizens, consumers,
and innovators. At the same time, we can address the digital
divide that separates regions and people, and make sure
that once online, everyone has the same user experience.
With open and universal online access, anything is possible.

14
As the Internet Society’s first Chief Economist, it has been an
honour for me to write the first of our Global Internet Reports.
Our vision is for this to be the first in an annual series of
reports, providing an overview of key data and trends showing
the growth and development of the Internet worldwide, each
year focusing on a particular theme. This year, in light of the
revelations of 2013 and subsequent challenges for standards
development and Internet governance, we chose the topic of
the Open and Sustainable Internet – why it is worthwhile to
protect and promote.
The report is largely written from the end-user perspective –
how we benefit from an open Internet and why its sustainability
is so important to so many aspects of civil life, business, and
government. This report is dedicated to our members and
their chapters, in recognition of their dedication to the Internet
Society and to the broader mission of promoting our principles
for the Internet. We hope that this report helps in that mission.
Preparing and delivering this report was a team effort across
the entire Internet Society. First, I would like to thank Karen
Rose, who had a vision several years ago to ‘bring data to
the dogma’ and brought me on to help fulfill that vision, and
also provided insight and experience on every aspect of the
report. I would also like to thank Lynn St.Amour, under whom
this project started, and Kathy Brown for her enthusiasm and
support since taking over.
I would also specifically like to thank a number of my
colleagues who helped with the content of the report. Markus
Kummer, Sally Wentworth, Konstantinos Komaitis, Nicolas
Seidler, Karen Mulberry, Leslie Daigle, Mat Ford, Dan
York, Lucy Lynch, Jane Coffin, Rajnesh Singh, Duangthip
Chomprang, Dawit Bekele, Michuki Mwangi, Sebastian
Bellagamba, and Raquel Gatto all provided input at various
stages of the project. Additional thanks to Carl Gahnberg,
who provided research and analysis throughout the project.
Author’s Notes and
Acknowledgements

In addition, a large team helped to prepare the report
for distribution and the online material, including Walda
Roseman, Greg Wood, Wende Cover, Howard Baggott,
Dan Graham, Fernando Zarur, Nona Phinn, Lia Kiessling,
KathySebuck,GrahamMinton,andJoyceDogniez. Please
visit the online material, where we will provide interactive
maps, updates, and new material throughout the year, at
www.internetsociety.org/global-internet-report.
Beyond the Internet Society staff, I would like to thank the
following members of the global Internet community for their
help and expertise:
• Bert Wijnen, research engineer, and Emile Aben, system
architect at RIPE NCC, for programming the Atlas probes
to provide the round trip times to YouTube and Facebook,
used in section 4.
• Jim Cowie, Chief Technology Officer, Renesys, who
provided the resilience and disruption data used for the
map in section 4.
• Robert Faris, Research Director of the Berkman Center
for Internet and Society at Harvard University, for his
peer review of the report.
• Mark Colville and Alex Reichl of Analysys Mason for
research and analysis throughout the report, and Valérie
Gualde for editing the report.
• Gerard Ross for providing a thorough and engaging final
review of the document.
• Blossom Communications for developing the
infographics, design, and layout of the report.
• TeliaSonera, who generously covered the cost of
Blossom Communications.
And finally, in the spirit of the Internet model, I welcome your
feedback, comments, and suggestions to help guide and
shape future reports.
Michael Kende
Chief Economist

16
A characteristic of the Internet, which has allowed it to grow
so quickly and made it sustainable, is that it is open – both
for users to access and innovate, and for all stakeholders
to participate in its development and governance. These
two aspects of openness did not arise separately, but
rather are closely linked, two sides of the same coin.
The founders of the Internet effectively acted as its
first multi-stakeholder group. They were pragmatic,
pioneering developers, guided by strong, shared
foundational principles. They set standards, arranged
for interconnection, provided service to their groups,
determined policies, and managed resources. As users
of the Internet themselves, they governed with a goal to
keep the Internet open and make it sustainable, creating
an early feedback loop between the users of the Internet
and their usage.
Later,astheInternetquicklygrewandthencommercialized,
the roles of the founders were filled by organizations that
arose and specialized, but held firm to the principle of
user involvement. These institutions developed first to set
standards and coordinate resources, then later emerged
to address broader Internet governance matters. In
this fashion, the feedback loop binding the users of the
Internet to its ongoing oversight created an infinite loop of
continuous improvement.
Many of the founders of the Internet were also founders
of the Internet Society in 1992, further contributing to the
feedback loop by promoting engagement and collaboration
on key issues facing the evolution and growth of the global
Internet. This Global Internet Report is the first in a series
meant to celebrate the progress of the Internet, highlight
trends, and illustrate the principles that will continue to
sustain the growth of the Internet.
This report focuses on the open and sustainable Internet –
what we mean by that, what benefits it brings, and how to
overcome threats that prevent those of us already online
from enjoying the full benefits, or that keep non-users
Introduction

from going online in the first place. Given the rapid pace of
change, it is important to solidify and spread the benefits
of the open Internet, rather than taking them for granted.
There are still significant differences dividing the Internet
experience around the world. Some users are never out
of range of a high-speed connection, while others may
have to walk to the nearest access point to get online.
Some have multiple smartphones, each with a mobile
broadband connection, while others must share a phone
among the whole family. And some are ‘digital natives’, for
whom nothing is a surprise, while others of us – those who
remember a time before the Internet – still marvel at what
can, and is, being done online.
This report is part of the ongoing attempt to create a future
in which everyone, everywhere is automatically a digital
native, such that the term itself will become a redundant
anachronism, and memories of a time without Internet will
be a thing of the past. Together, we must ensure the day
never comes when digital natives reminisce about how
the Internet used to be governed by, and for, the end-
users, and how it used to provide access to everyone and
everything online.

18
This is your
Internet:
Trends and
Growth
SECTION 01

1.1 Introduction
Against a backdrop of relentless growth, the Internet
continues to change and evolve, as highlighted in Figure 1.2.
In just the past ten years, the number of Internet users shot
past one billion and is nearing three billion; users migrated
their fixed Internet access from dial-up to broadband; and
their usage shifted from text-based to predominantly video
traffic. Globally, the number of users in developing countries
now exceeds those in developed countries; there are now
more mobile broadband subscribers than fixed; and mobile
access has shifted to smartphones.
Against this constant change, the fundamental nature of the
Internet has remained constant. The Internet is a uniquely
universal platform that uses the same standards in every
country, so that every user can interact with every other user
in ways unimaginable even 10 years ago. This report shows
why it is important to maintain, and strengthen, the open and
sustainable Internet that has enabled the growth and the
changes, outlined in this section.
1.2 Overview
The Internet, both in terms of infrastructure and content,
has grown rapidly since its inception, spurring enormous
innovation, diverse network expansion, and increased user
engagement in a virtuous circle of growth.
The number of Internet users has risen steadily as shown in
Figure 1.1, reflecting the compelling draw and uptake of the
growing and more diverse Internet services. We anticipate
that the milestone of 3 billion users will be reached in early
2015, based on a recent International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) forecast.1
2,893,587,260
Internet Users Worldwide
10 May 2014, 8:00 am CET
[Source: internetlivestats.com]
Internetusers(billions)
0
2008
2011
2009
2012
2014*
2010
2013
3,0
Figure 1.1: Global Internet users
[Source: ITU,2
2014] (* signifies a forecast)

20
FIGURE 1.2: Timeline of milestones in development of the Internet
[Source: Internet Society, Analysys Mason, 2014]
2003 2005
2006
2007 2009
FIRST WORLD
SUMMIT ON THE
INFORMATION
SOCIETY (WSIS)
GENEVA
12/03
2004
2008
FIXED BROADBAND
EXCEEDS
DIAL-UP
07/04
TUNIS
AGENDA
11/05
1BILLION
INTERNET
USERS
10/05
FASTER
DSL
VDSL2 RELEASED
08/06
IPHONE LAUNCH
06/07
OF THE WORLD’S
INTERNET USERS
DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES HAVE
MORE THAN
50%
01/08
FASTER
CABLE
DOCSIS 3.0
RELEASED

2011 2013
2014
2015
2010
2012
FIRST 4G
NETWORK
LAUNCH
12/09
MOBILE BROADBAND
EXCEEDS
FIXED
02/10
WIKIPEDIA
1 BILLION EDITS
04/10
FIXED BROADBAND
SUBSCRIBERS
500
MILLION
07/10
2BILLION
INTERNET
USERS
11/10
OF INTERNET USERS
HAVE A MOBILE
BROADBAND
CONNECTION
50%
10/11
VIDEO
MAKES UP
OF INTERNET
TRAFFIC
50%
06/12
OF THE WORLD’S
MOBILE BROADBAND
SUBSCRIBERS
DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES HAVE
MORE THAN
50%
09/12
1BILLION
INTERNET
HOSTS
09/13
3
BILLION
INTERNET
USERS
SMARTPHONES 50%
OF ALL MOBILE
PHONES
01/14
Fixed broadband Usage
Mobile broadband Users
Regions
Internet Governance
Date (Month/Year)

22
As shown in Figure 1.3, the global proportion of people
using the Internet has risen at a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 12% in the period 2008-2012, reaching
a level of 37.9% of the global population in 2013. The
increase in usage is particularly evident in those regions
that had lower levels of Internet usage in 2008, with the
comparable growth rates for the period in sub-Saharan
Africa and emerging Asia-Pacific exceeding 20%, as can
be seen in Figure 1.3.3
Global
Central and Eastern EuropeNorth America Middle East and North Africa
Western Europe Sub-Saharan Africa
Emerging Asia-PacificDeveloped Asia-Pacific Latin America and Caribbean
PercentageInternetusers
90%
0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
CAGR
2%
2%
4%
13%
13%
12%
19%
21%
32%
Every computer, mobile phone, and any other device
connected to the Internet needs an IP address to
communicate with other devices. Thus, underpinning the
increase in the number of Internet users is an increase in the
number of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses issued by the five
international Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).4
IPv6 is the next-generation IP standard intended to replace
IPv4, the protocol most Internet services use today. As can
be seen in Figure 1.4 and Figure 1.5 below, while more IPv4
space has been issued by the RIRs in total, the volumes
Figure 1.3: Proportion of population using the Internet
[Source: ITU, 2013]
69.6%Local Internet Registries (LIRs)
in the RIPE NCC area with IPv6
allocations
May 2014
[Source: labs.ripe.net/statistics]

of addresses being allocated for IPv6 are growing much
more rapidly. This slowing in the volume of IPv4 address
space being issued is explained by the near depletion of the
IPv4 address pool (in fact, some regions have effectively
exhausted their IPv4 resources). At the same time, IPv6
implementation is just beginning to take off.5
LACNICRIPE NCC ARINAPNIC AFRINIC
TotalIPv4addressspaceissued(/8s)
CAGR
13%
9%
8%
23%
30%
0
2008 20132009 2010 20122011
50
LACNICARIN APNICRIPE NCC AFRINIC
Figure 1.4: Growth in IPv4 address space issued by each RIR in terms of /8s6
[Source: The Number Resource Organization, 2014]
Figure 1.5: IPv6 allocations made by each RIR
[Source: The Number Resource Organization, 2014]
TotalIPv6assigmentstoeachRIR
42%
35%
38%
62%
39%0
2008 201320122009 2010 2011
7,000
CAGR

24
The growth and diversity of Internet infrastructure and its use
can also be witnessed in the growth of key Internet identifiers,
including autonomous system numbers (roughly measuring
the number of distinct networks that interconnect to make
up the Internet) and domain name registrations. As noted in
Figure 1.6, nearly 70,000 autonomous systems were assigned
and more than 135 million domain names registered in total
by 2013. This diversity of networks and names serves the
range of content and applications that have come to define the
Internet experience of today, from education and government
content to business, entertainment, and beyond.7
Similarly, Internet host numbers are growing, from just 1.3
million in January 1993 to 1.01 billion in January 2014.8
Based
on these numbers, we estimate that the threshold of 1 billion
Internet hosts was passed in September 2013.9
This growth
in the number of computers connected directly to the Internet
– at a yearly rate over 37% across 21 years – is a strong
indicator of the huge rise in Internet connectivity and usage.
While Internet access continues to grow at significant rates,
users are also rapidly shifting to broadband connections.
Internet access can take many forms, from shared dial-
up access in an Internet café to ultra-fast fibre-to-the-home
broadband connections, and all forms are important to those
users who rely on them for access. However, the clear trend
is towards broadband access, both fixed and mobile, owing
to the advantages of offering always-on access to ever-
increasing amounts of bandwidth. Therefore, with an eye on
the benefits to end-users, in this report we highlight advances
in broadband Internet access.10
Asshowninthenextsections,bothfixedandmobilebroadband
connections are expected to grow, with mobile connections
already outnumbering fixed broadband connections. Of
particular interest is the strong and accelerating growth in
mobile broadband connections in the emerging regions that
have low Internet penetration today.
While Internet adoption is growing worldwide, so is Internet
traffic per connection, due to the increasing move to higher-
bandwidth broadband access connections, the corresponding
adoption of relatively data-heavy Internet applications (such
as audio and video streaming) and increased adoption of
devices, such as smartphones, that are optimized to access
these applications. These themes are explored further in the
next sections.
1,010,251,829
Hosts advertised in the Domain
Name System
January 2014
[Source: Internet Systems Consortium, 2014]
Figure 1.6: Growth in domain names and
autonomous system assignments
[Source: Regional Internet Registry, webhosting.info, 2014]
Autonomous system assignments
Domain names
2008
2011
2009
2012
2013
2010
Cumulativeautonomoussystem
assignments(thousand)
0
70
Domainnames(million)
140

1.3 Fixed broadband Internet access
Fixed Internet subscriptions are increasingly dominated by
broadband access. Broadband subscriptions reached 93%
of total global fixed Internet subscriptions in 2012, as can
be seen in Figure 1.7. All regions, aside from sub-Saharan
Africa, had at least 90% of their fixed Internet access
services at broadband speeds11
by 2012. The 54% fixed
broadband proportion in sub-Saharan Africa is not, however,
a reflection of the total proportion of Internet access provided
at broadband speeds in the region. This is because fixed
access makes up only 4% of total Internet subscriptions in
the region, while in North America, for example, 44% of total
Internet subscriptions are fixed.
The number of users with fixed broadband connections12
has risen rapidly, as shown in Figure 1.8A. Connections are
forecast to continue to rise, with particularly significant growth
expected in the emerging Asia-Pacific region. However, the
overall rate of global growth in fixed broadband connections
will likely slow, from 10% annual growth for the period 2010-
2013 to 5% for the forecast period 2013-2018, as developed
fixed broadband markets approach saturation and mobile
broadband continues to increase in importance.
Figure 1.7: Proportion of fixed Internet subscriptions that are broadband
[Source: Analysys Mason, 2014]
Broadbandsubscriptionsas%oftotalfixed
Internetsubscriptions
100%
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Central and Eastern Europe
Western Europe Middle East and North AfricaDeveloped Asia-Pacific
Sub-Saharan AfricaNorth America Latin America and Caribbean
Emerging Asia-Pacific Global

26
While there is growth in fixed connections globally, in some
regions the connections are starting from a very low base and
are forecast to remain low relative to more developed regions.
For example, despite the 20% annual growth forecast for
sub-Saharan Africa, connections in that region will represent
less than 10% of the connections forecast for North America,
despite a 2.4 times larger population in sub-Saharan Africa.
However, as shown in the next section, it is expected that
mobile broadband connections will dominate, with 703 million
3G and 4G connections forecast for sub-Saharan Africa in
2018 (as compared to 11.9 million fixed connections).
Alongside the increase in the number of fixed broadband
connections, total fixed broadband Internet traffic is expected to
continue growing rapidly, with global traffic forecast to more than
quadruple between 2013 and 2018, as shown in Figure 1.8B.
While both connections and Internet traffic will continue to
rise, the increase in traffic is expected to be the more rapid,
with a growth rate of 35% for the period 2013 to 2018 relative
to 5% growth for connections over the same period. This is
due to the global average traffic per connection being forecast
to continue to grow significantly to reach an average 9.5GB
per month per connection by 2018, as shown in Figure 1.8C
below.
This increase in traffic per connection results from the rise
in average bandwidth associated with the move to higher-
bandwidth broadband connections, in combination with the
rise in data-heavy Internet applications using rich media
such as video. As can be seen in Figure 1.9, streaming one
minute of video generates over 200 times more traffic than
sending a single email. The proportion of fixed Internet traffic
originating from video applications13
has been forecast, by
Cisco, to rise from 48% to 67% of total traffic between 2012
and 2017. Simultaneously, the proportion of traffic from web,
email, and data applications is expected to fall from 23% to
18%, and the proportion from file sharing from 29% to 14%.14
This increase in video traffic is not at the expense of other
Internet content and applications, however, as they are all
forecast to experience a growth in total traffic. Within North
America, traffic from the largest online video application,
Netflix, makes up just over 28% of peak fixed traffic in North
America, representing an average of 12.5 GB per month
per fixed broadband subscriber, with YouTube representing
another 16.8% of peak fixed traffic.15
673,295,648
Fixed Broadband Subscribers
Worldwide
December 2013
[Source: ITU, 2014]

Figure 1.8: Fixed broadband
A. Global fixed broadband connections
B. Global fixed broadband Internet traffic
C. Monthly fixed broadband Internet traffic per connection
Emerging Asia-Pacific
Sub-Saharan Africa Central and Eastern EuropeMiddle East and North Africa
Western EuropeLatin America and Caribbean North America
Developed Asia-Pacific Global
Connections(million)
1,000
0
2010 2011 2012 2013* 2014* 2015* 2016* 2017* 2018*
A.
Traffic(PBmillion)
1.4
0
2010 2011 2012 2013* 2014* 2015* 2016* 2017* 2018*
B.
Trafficperconnection(GB/month)
20
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014* 2015* 2016* 2017* 2018*
C.

28
One of the key issues for the future of the fixed broadband
market will be how operators keep up with the demands for
additional capacity arising from growing traffic and subscriber
numbers. We would expect to see more investment in core
network infrastructure, based on either new or existing
technologies. Additionally, usage-based pricing, which
restricts demand, may become more prevalent. The latter
has already begun to be used, with 219 of the 691 broadband
offers surveyed by the Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) in September 2012,
including explicit data caps.16
1.4 Mobile broadband Internet access
In the past several years, mobile broadband growth rates
have exceeded even the significant rate of growth of fixed
broadband access, particularly in developing regions.
As shown in Figure 1.10, mobile broadband access has
grown rapidly in the period 2008-2012. Of particular note
is the developed Asia-Pacific region where the population
penetration of mobile broadband exceeded 100% by year-
end 2012, based on users with multiple subscriptions. Global
penetration of mobile broadband subscriptions has grown at
a yearly rate of 87% over the period shown, reaching 22%
penetration in 2012.
Figure 1.9: Traffic generated by different applications
[Source: Sprint, http://shop.sprint.com/content/datacalculator/index2.html, 2013]
Traffic generated (MB)
Email - one;
no attachment
0.02
Websurfing -
one page
0.49
Music -
one minute
1.00
Image - one
0.29
Video -
one minute
4.17

In the next sections, we show that not only are there forecasts
for significant growth in mobile broadband penetration, but
the mobile broadband technology will be upgraded in many
countries to meet users’ demand for greater bandwidth
speed.
Populationpenetration
0%
100%
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Figure 1.10: Mobile broadband population penetration
[Source: ITU, 2013]
Developed Asia-Pacific Emerging Asia-PacificWestern Europe
Sub-Saharan AfricaNorth America Middle East and North Africa
Latin America and Caribbean Global
1,930,257,214
Mobile Broadband
Subscribers Worldwide
December 2013
[Source: ITU, 2014]

30
FIGURE 1.11: Overview of the different mobile technology generations
Note: 2G and 3G are widely available whilst 4G is in its early stages of deployment
1980
1990
2000
2010
2G
153.6 KBIT/S
3G
56 MBIT/S
4G
1 GBIT/S
1G
1st
GENERATION WIRELESS
First-generation wireless analogue
cellular communications standard;
analogue radios, poor voice quality.
2nd
GENERATION WIRELESS
Second-generation wireless digital
cellular communications standard;
digital radios, improved speech quality,
encrypted transmission, data services.
3rd
GENERATION WIRELESS
Third-generation wireless digital
technology standard; offers faster
data rates, allowing a wider range of
products and services to be delivered.
4th
GENERATION WIRELESS
Fourth-generation wireless digital
technology standard for mobile
phones and data terminals; offers
faster data rate then 3G with greater
spectral efficiency.
Start of standards development Commercial system launch

Reach of mobile broadband access
The coverage of mobile broadband access is expanding
significantly, particularly in regions with lower fixed
broadband coverage. As can be seen in Figure 1.12, the
proportion of the global population covered by a mobile
service of at least 3G standard rose from 12% in 2008 to
22% in 2012.
As shown in Figure 1.11, 3G networks offer several times
greater bandwidth speed than the earlier 2G technology
generation. This allows for Internet access at higher speeds,
enabling applications such as audio and video streaming,
video conferencing, and online TV. This greatly enhanced
user experience for Internet services means that the
significant majority of mobile Internet traffic today is carried
over 3G or more advanced technologies.
Industryrolloutof4G(andmoreadvancedfuturegenerations)
serves to further increase the network capacity and
bandwidth speeds available. Mobile access technologies
are now even more capable of supporting the data-intensive
Internet services demanded by users.
The increased coverage of these mobile network
technologies with faster Internet speeds is not simply arising
from expanding coverage of existing networks, but also
Figure 1.12: Proportion of population covered by at least 3G
[Source: ITU, 2013]
Latin America and Caribbean
Central and Eastern EuropeNorth America Sub-Saharan Africa
Emerging Asia-Pacific Global
Middle East and North AfricaWestern Europe Developed Asia-Pacific
Populationcoverage
100%
0%
2008 20122009 2010 2011

32
from the deployment of new, or upgraded, networks across
a larger number of countries. As can be seen in Figure 1.13,
by the end of 2012 3G networks were active in 181 countries.
Meanwhile, 4G networks have been deployed in 63 countries.
These upgraded mobile networks are clustered across certain
regions, with 100% of Western European, North American, and
developedAsia-Pacific countries operating 3G networks, as can
be seen in Figure 1.14. More than 50% of countries in these
regions also operate 4G networks. A lower proportion of Middle-
Eastern and North African, Central and Eastern European, sub-
Saharan African, Latin American, and emerging Asia-Pacific
countries have rolled out 3G and 4G networks.
Figure 1.13: Number of countries with mobile network deployments using different technologies
Countrieswithaccesstonetworktechnology
250
0
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
(Fig. 1.14)
2G 3G 4G
Countries
60
0
Western
Europe
Central and
Eastern Europe
North
America
Developed
Asia-Pacific
Emerging
Asia-Pacific
Middle East and
North Africa
Latin America
and Caribbean
Sub-Saharan
Africa
Total countries Countries with 3G networks Countries with 4G networks
Figure 1.14: 3G and 4G network deployments by region in 2012

The increase in the deployment of 3G and 4G mobile
networks across all geographies has led to a rise in the
combined penetration of mobile broadband-compatible
devices, including handsets. As a result, mobile broadband
subscriptions are growing as a proportion of total Internet
users, with the number of mobile broadband subscriptions
reaching 60% of global Internet user numbers in 2012, as
shown in Figure 1.15. This indicates that mobile broadband
access is becoming increasingly important relative to all
other forms of Internet access.17
As can be seen from the chart above, in the developed Asia-
Pacific region, mobile broadband subscriptions have actually
exceeded the number of Internet users, indicating that some
users have multiple mobile broadband subscriptions. In
developing regions, mobile broadband subscriptions have
grown to roughly 40% of Internet users. However, we would
expect there to be sharing of mobile broadband subscriptions
in these regions, suggesting that more than 40% of Internet
users may have access to such services.
In the next section, we examine further the breakdown in
adoption and usage, with forecasts out to 2018.
Figure 1.15: Relationship between Internet users and mobile broadband subscriptions
Mobilebroadbandsubscriptionsas%of
Internetusers
0
100%
201220112010200920082007
Developed Asia-Pacific Emerging Asia-PacificWestern Europe
Sub-Saharan AfricaNorth America Latin America and Caribbean
Middle East and North Africa Global

34
Mobile broadband adoption and usage
Mobile broadband connections are forecast to continue to
grow across all geographies to 5.3 billion in 2018, as shown
in Figure 1.16A below.18
This will be approximately six times
the number of fixed broadband connections forecast for
2018, reflecting in part the personal nature of mobile access
devices,19
but also the available range and wide appeal of
these devices.
Mobile data traffic, from all connections, both those shown
in Figure 1.16B and 2G handsets, is expected to continue
growing rapidly, with global mobile Internet traffic forecast to
increase more than six-fold over the period 2013-2018, as
shown in Figure 1.16B.
As with fixed broadband access, mobile data traffic is forecast
to grow faster than mobile broadband connections, due to
the significant increases projected for mobile data traffic per
device. This can be seen in Figure 1.16C below.
The rise of relatively data-heavy applications is one reason
for the growth in mobile Internet traffic per connection. As with
fixed Internet traffic, while traffic is expected to grow across all
applications, video applications are expected to make up an
increasingly large proportion of total consumer traffic, forecast
by Cisco to rise from 33% to 56% over the period 2012-2017. In
North America, YouTube20
video traffic has grown to a monthly
average level of nearly 74MB per mobile Internet subscriber
per month, representing nearly 16.7% of peak mobile traffic.21
This increase in Internet traffic per device can also be partially
attributed to the migration of users to devices more suited
to mobile data, such as smartphones. The Analysys Mason
forecasts in Figure 1.17 show that post-2013 the majority of
mobile handsets shipped will be smartphones. Shipments
of smartphones will increase steadily to reach 1.37 billion in
2017 compared to 0.59 billion for other handsets.

Connections(million)
6.000
0
2018*2017*2016*2015*2014*2013*20122011
Sub-Saharan Africa Central and Eastern EuropeMiddle East and North Africa
Western EuropeLatin America and Caribbean North America
Developed Asia-Pacific
Mobiledatatraffic(PBthousand)
90
0
2018*2017*2016*2015*2014*2013*20122011
Trafficperconnection(MB/monththousand)
6
0
2018*2017*2016*2015*2014*2013*20122011
Global
Figure 1.16: Mobile broadband
A. Global mobile broadband connections
B. Global mobile Internet traffic
C. Monthly mobile Internet traffic per device
A.
B.
C.

36
The increase in the volume of smartphone shipments
shown above is in part a result of price reductions.
As shown in Figure 1.18 below, as the global average
smartphone price has fallen, from around USD305 in 2011
to a forecast USD220 in 2014, the volume of smartphones
shipped has risen from 491 million to a forecast of over
one billion.
A number of companies provide low-cost smartphones for
developing countries, for example MTN Zambia offers a
‘Nokia Asha 210’, with a variety of advanced features, for
USD80.50.22
Similarly, in Kenya, the ‘Tecno M3’ can be
bought for USD102; and the ‘Alcatel One Touch T’Pop’,
with the Android Gingerbread operating system and
multitouch display, for USD68.23
Smartphones provide a more data-intensive service to
consumers than other handsets, with their ability to support
Internet access via traditional applications such as web
browsers and email clients, as well as a new category of
mobile apps – application software written for smartphones
and tablets – that enable a huge array of Internet services
including video calling, games, and a variety of location-
based services. In conjunction with high-speed mobile
networks, the mobile broadband Internet service available
via handsets and dongles can be a substitute for fixed
broadband Internet access.
As with fixed broadband access, one of the significant
challenges over the next few years for network operators
and policy-makers will be addressing the increase in
mobile Internet traffic volume. Mobile operators are
assigned a finite amount of spectrum, which must be
shared among all their users in the vicinity of the same cell
tower. An increased number of users – each sending and
receiving more Internet traffic – leads to more congestion,
particularly in crowded areas of cities.
To address the resulting congestion, on the demand side
it is already common to impose usage charges or caps,
which may reduce usage, but tend not to be targeted to
reduce congestion at peak times or in peak usage areas.
As a result, they may also restrict usage in areas where
there is no congestion; however, even where there is
congestion, efforts to accommodate growing usage, rather
than stifle it, should be encouraged.
Figure 1.17: Global shipments of handsets
Other handsets
Smartphone
2011
2009
2012
2013*
2014*
2015*
2016*
2017*
2010
Handsetshipments(billion)
0
1.6
Figure 1.18: Relationship between global
average smartphone prices and retail
shipments
[Source: Oppenheimer, Analysys Mason, 2014]
200
0
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
SmartphoneASP(USD)
Smartphone shipments (millions)
0
350
2012
2013
2014*
2011

On the supply side, several efforts are underway to increase
the capacity of mobile networks. First, in many countries
significant efforts are underway to increase the amount of
spectrum available. For example, the UK government in
2011 committed to releasing at least 500MHz of public sector
spectrum holdings below 5GHz by 2020.24
Additionally, the
upgrade of networks to 4G allows operators to take advantage
of the greater spectral efficiency provided by those bands to
increase capacity on the existing spectrum bands.25
Another way to address the increase in traffic is to ‘offload’
the traffic to Wi-Fi, where it can be carried over a fixed-wired
or wireless network. This trend is increasing globally, as
illustrated in Figure 1.19. By 2018, the proportion of Internet
traffic generated from mobile devices and carried over mobile
networks is forecast to fall to just 20% of total mobile traffic
from its 2013 level of around 38% (while the absolute level of
traffic carried on mobile networks continues to rise).
These efforts will help to accommodate and promote growth
in mobile broadband access and usage, enabling a greater
number of users around the world to benefit from the
increasing amount of content and applications optimized for
the broadband experience.
Figure 1.19: Total annual cellular and Wi-Fi Internet traffic originating from mobile devices
CellularandWi-Fitraffic(PBthousand)
450
0
2011 2012 2013* 2014* 2015* 2016* 2017* 2018*
Wi-Fi MBB device traffic Cellular handset trafficWi-Fi handset traffic Cellular MBB device traffic

38
1.5 Trends
Currently, fixed and mobile broadband access methods are both
extensively used, with mobile broadband appearing particularly
important in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa where mobile
infrastructure and access is more widely available than fixed
networks. As a result, mobile broadband is following the trend
of mobile telephony, and surpassing the uptake of comparable
fixed services. In developed areas, where Internet penetration
is already high, access is increasingly moving towards mobile
broadband subscriptions, often alongside fixed broadband
connections at home or in the office.
As shown in Figure 1.20, the past five years have brought
increases in total Internet users and in global fixed and
mobile broadband subscriptions. The rate of growth in
mobile broadband subscriptions for the period 2008-2012 is
significantly higher than the rate of growth in Internet users,
with a marked difference in developing regions. This indicates
that mobile broadband is becoming an increasingly common
method of Internet access. On the other hand, fixed broadband
subscription growth rates are approximately in line with those
for overall Internet use. This suggests that fixed broadband,
while maintaining its importance, is not dramatically increasing
the share of Internet access it provides.
Figure 1.20: Summary of growth in Internet users and broadband subscriptions, 2008-2012
Internet users Fixed (wired) broadband Mobile broadband
2012 users
(million)
CAGR
2008-2012 (%)
2012
subscriptions
(million)
CAGR
2008-2012 (%)
2012
subscriptions
(million)
CAGR
2008-2012 (%)
Western Europe 326 4% 129 6% 227 50%
Central and Eastern
Europe
210 12% 55 16% 140 161%
North America 286 3% 101 4% 253 76%
Developed Asia-Pacific 192 2% 70 4% 243 57%
Emerging Asia-Pacific 947 20% 214 22% 419 474%
Middle East and North
Africa
140 20% 14 23% 54 256%
Latin America and
Caribbean
262 14% 49 16% 109 129%
Sub-Saharan Africa 137 28% 2 26% 59 264%
World 2500 12% 634 11% 1504 88%
474%Annual growth rate in mobile
broadband subscriptions in Emerging
Asia-Pacific, 2008-2012

Theimpactofmobilenetworksindevelopingregionscanhardly
be overstated. In those regions, mobile phone penetration far
exceeded early predictions, and in so doing became one of the
fastest adopted technologies in history. In 1999, for example,
Safaricom projected that Kenya would have a total of three
million mobile subscriptions by 2020.26
And yet, in November
2013, Safaricom alone reported 20.8 million subscribers.27
Early indications are that mobile broadband is actually being
adopted at an even faster pace than mobile cellular.
Figure 1.21 compares mobile broadband device penetration
to that of mobile phone subscriptions for the regions in
which mobile can be considered the dominant method of
broadband access, with Y0 indicating the year in which
services launched in that geography.28
Thus, for instance for
Central and Eastern Europe, Y0 is 1996 for mobile phone,
and 2007 for mobile broadband.29
By lining up the start point
for the services, it is possible to compare their early growth
rates, and see that mobile broadband is easily outpacing the
earlier growth of mobile phones.
Figure 1.21: Comparison of mobile broadband and mobile phone penetration
160%
0%
Y0 Y18
Populationpenetration(%)
Central and Eastern European
70%
0%
Y0 Y18
Sub-Saharan African
120%
0%
Y0 Y18
Latin America
90%
0%
Y0 Y18
120%
0%
Y0 Y18
Middle East and North African
Mobile broadband penetration
Y0 is the year services were launched
Y0=1996 for mobile phone (1994 for Latin America)
Y0=2007 for mobile broadband
Mobile phone penetration

40
As can be seen in Figure 1.21, the regional growth rates
in mobile broadband population penetration appear to be
significantly higher than the already high corresponding
historical growth in mobile cellular penetration. By Y5 (which
corresponds to 2012 for the mobile broadband data), mobile
broadband penetration exceeds cellular penetration by
between 5 and 19 percentage points. Given the increasing
reach of mobile broadband networks, and upgrades to newer
technologies, the fast uptake of mobile broadband access is
very encouraging for increasing overall Internet penetration.
Box 1: Global Internet User Survey
The Global Internet User Survey (GIUS) is a globally scoped survey developed by the Internet
Society to provide reliable information relevant to issues important to the Internet’s future.30
The
GIUS focuses solely on the views of users as the source of innovation that has driven the Internet’s
development, evolution, and dramatic growth over the past four decades.
In 2013, the GIUS interviewed 10,500 Internet users in 20 countries around the world. Details
about the countries, gender, and age distribution are contained in Annex B. We show results
from this survey throughout this report, and note that the results represent the views of the users
surveyed rather than the positions or views of the Internet Society, or its global community.
As a starting point, the following figure shows that, on average, the users surveyed are “very
positive” or “somewhat positive” about the general state of the Internet today. In a theme that is
consistent throughout the survey responses, users in Africa and Latin America express the most
optimism about the general state of the Internet, as well as the specific impact that it can have on
their lives, as shown further below in Section 3.
Survey responses
How do you view the general state of the Internet today?
[Source: Internet Society, Global Internet User Survey, 2014]
Africa Asia-PacificN. America
(USA)
Latin America Europe Middle East
Somewhat negative Very positiveNot applicable Very negative Somewhat positive
100%
0%

1.6 Conclusion
The number of Internet users is approaching 3 billion.
Against the backdrop of an ever-increasing number of users,
Internet access is increasingly shifting to broadband and, in
particular, mobile broadband access using a smart device.
As a result, users are generating more traffic in general and,
specifically, more high bandwidth video traffic. At the same
time, the geographic centre of gravity is shifting to developing
countries, whose users now outweigh those in developed
countries.
The result is a network of networks encompassing an
increasing proportion of the world’s population, engaged in an
increasing amount of online activity. In the following sections
of the report, we examine how the open Internet is sustained
by open multi-stakeholder governance, the benefits that the
resulting platform generates, and the emerging challenges
to the intrinsic nature of the open and sustainable Internet.

42
Open and
Sustainable
Internet
SECTION 02

2.1 Introduction
The Internet has changed the world. Open access to the
Internet has revolutionized the way individuals communicate
and collaborate, entrepreneurs and corporations conduct
business, and governments and citizens interact.At the same
time, the Internet established a revolutionary open model for
its own development and governance, encompassing all
stakeholders.
In this context, openness should be understood as including:
• decision-making with a sense of equity and fairness
among participants, based on broad consensus,
transparency, and thoughtful consideration of diverse
interests and viewpoints, and,
• the ability for any interested and informed party to
participate and contribute in the development of
standards or decisions.
ThedevelopmentoftheInternetreliedcriticallyonestablishing
an open process. Fundamentally, the Internet is a ‘network of
networks’ whose protocols are designed to allow networks to
interoperate. In the beginning, these networks represented
different communities – including academia, research, and
defence – whose members needed to cooperate to develop
common standards and manage joint resources.
As the Internet was commercialized, vendors and operators
joined the open protocol development process and helped
unleash an unprecedented era of growth and innovation.1
Vendors found value in adopting standards that promoted
interoperability between products across the industry,
including their competitors, which in turn ensured that
operators’ networks could interconnect globally.
“A working definition of Internet governance
is the development and application by
governments, the private sector and civil
society, in their respective roles, of shared
principles, norms, rules, decision-making
procedures, and programmes that shape the
evolution and use of the Internet.”
Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, 18 November 2005, Paragraph 34

44
The collaboration between the communities of interest was
made possible by the tools they themselves created to
communicate and share information across this global inter-
network, such as email, file transfers, and then the World
Wide Web. Indeed, the users, innovators, and stewards of
the network were one and the same, creating a vital feedback
loop among all parts and interests in the system. This loop
has ensured that the openness of the process developing
the network is reflected in the open usage of the network,
and vice versa.
The spirit of collaboration that underpinned the foundation
of the Internet has now extended to a multistakeholder
governance model for determining policy over shared
Internet resources. The result is an infinite loop, as shown in
Figure 2.1, in which users of all kinds develop the standards
underpinning the Internet and in turn provide stewardship
for the resulting resources and related policies. This leads
to a common, interoperable, and accessible environment
that fosters seamless connectivity, consumer choice, and
fundamental rights of expression, and it enables end users
to advance their social and economic objectives.
Figure 2.1: Infinite feedback loop of Internet development and governance
[Source: Internet Society, 2014]
Standards: The Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB) became the Internet Advisory Board in 1984, then the Internet Activities Board in 1986, and finally the Internet Architecture
Board (IAB) in 1992, operating under the auspices of the Internet Society. IEEE traces its roots back to 1884, but its first involvement in networking standards that are today used to access
the Internet dates to 1980, with the first 802 working group, whose standards include IEEE 802.3, better known as Ethernet, and IEEE 802.11, better known as WiFi. For a history of the
latter, see http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Wireless_LAN_802.11_Wi-Fi .The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) are overseen by the
IAB, and all work on Internet standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) works on Web standards. For more details, see the Brief History of the Internet,
at http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet.
Internet governance. For more on the Internet Society (ISOC) see www.internetsociety.org; for more information on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the Tunis
Agenda see http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.html; for more information on the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) see http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/. For more information on NETmundial,
see http://netmundial.br. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages resources for global naming and addressing capabilities. See www.icann.org.
USER
INTERNET
GOVERNANCE
STANDARD-
SETTING
IGF
(2006)
NET
MUNDIAL
(2014)
TUNIS
AGENDA
(2005)
W3C
(1994)
ICCB
(1979)
> IAB
(1992)
IEEE
(1980)
IETF
(1986)
IRTF
(1986)
WSIS
(2003)
ISOC
(1992)
ICANN
(1998)

In particular, arising from the Internet’s historical roots is a
system in which users actively participate in decision making
over standards and governance. By ensuring that no single
stakeholder ‘owns’ Internet development or governance, the
open model ensures that the Internet continues to meet the
needs of all stakeholders.
In the following sections, we provide an overview of the
Internet ecosystem and the involvement of different parties in
different processes. We then proceed to highlight openness
as it pertains to Internet governance and standard setting,
and also how the underlying multistakeholder model can be
applied to selected regional development efforts.
Internet ecosystem
‘Internet ecosystem’ is the term used to describe the
organizations, communities, and interactions that have
evolved to guide the operation and development of the
technologies and infrastructure that comprise the global
Internet. The term implies an evolution, focusing on the
rapid and continued development and adoption of Internet
technologies. It is characterized by the involvement of a broad
range of stakeholders; open, transparent, and collaborative
processes; and the use of services and infrastructure with
dispersed ownership and control.
Organizations that comprise the Internet ecosystem include:
• Technical standards bodies, such as the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF), the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), and the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
• Organizations that manage resources for global naming
and addressing capabilities, such as the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
(including its current operation of the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA) function), Regional Internet
Registries (RIRs), and Domain Name Registries and
Registrars
• Companies that provide network infrastructure services,
such as domain name service providers, network
operators, cloud and content delivery network providers,
and Internet exchange points (IXPs)
• Individuals and organizations that use the Internet to
communicate with each other and offer services and
applications, or develop content, and

46
• Organizations that provide education and build capacity
for developing and using Internet technologies, such as
multilateral organizations, educational institutions, and
governmental agencies.
Within the Internet ecosystem, these organizations have
responsibilities for the protocols and standards that enable
basic end-to-end communications (such as the Internet
Protocol); the resources that direct these communications
(such as IP addresses and the Domain Name System
(DNS)); the provision of reliable connectivity that ensures
the communications reach their intended destinations (such
as undersea and terrestrial cable systems, access networks,
and IXPs); and the policies, frameworks, and educational
activities necessary to ensure the Internet’s openness,
continuity, and flexibility.
As evidence of the continued evolution of the ecosystem,
in March 2014 the US National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention “to
transition key Internet domain name functions to the global
multistakeholder community”.2
IANA, which is currently
administered by ICANN, manages the DNS root zone, IP
addresses, and the IP technical parameter registries. NTIA
has asked ICANN to convene global stakeholders to develop
a proposal to transition NTIA’s current role as steward of the
IANA functions, thereby recognising the interest and ability
of the multistakeholder community to absorb this key role.3
The technologies, resources, and services of the Internet
ecosystem are all highly interdependent and require a
significant amount of coordination. Each organization
involved has a specific role and provides fundamental value
to the overall functioning of the Internet. These organizations
and roles are highlighted in Figure 2.2.

INTERNET
ECOSYSTEM
Individuals IANA
gTLDs
gTLDs
ccTLDs
ccTLDs
RIRs
ICANN
Businesses
Governments
Organizations
Governmental Regional Organizations
Multilateral Institutions
Internet Society
Other Policy Discussion Forums
Machines/Devices
Service Creators
and Equipment
Builders
Service Creators/Venders
Network Operators
Root Servers
Internet Exchange Points
Governments
Governments
NAMINGAND
ADDRESSING
USERS
POLICY
DEVELOPMENT
SHARED GLOBAL
SERVIES AND
OPERATIONS
OPEN STANDARDS
DEVELOPMENT
EDUCATION
AND CAPACITY
BUILDING
Internet Community
Organizations and Businesses
Universities and Academic
Institutions
Other Standards
Bodies
W3C
ITU-T
Specialized Bodies
Internet Society
Affiliated Organizations
IETF
IAB
IRTF
Multilateral Institutions
Internet Society Individual Members
Individual Members
Organization Members
Organization Members
Chapters
Chapters
1
2
3
4
5
2
3
Figure 2.2: Internet ecosystem

48
These organizations have a proven, long-standing relationship
with one another and have contributed to the Internet’s
incredible growth and stability. They make use of well-
established mechanisms, including open, public meetings,
mailing lists, and bottom-up policy development processes
that enable direct participation by any interested party. These
attributes give the system the flexibility to respond and adapt to
the Internet’s rapidly evolving technology and to the changing
needsoftheInternetcommunity.Theresultisasignificantbody
of knowledge and experience in the successful administration
and management of the technologies, resources, and services
that make the Internet the success it is today.4
Multistakeholder model
Thedevelopment,governance,andcoordinationoftheInternet
results from discussions, debates, and policy development
processes in many specialized forums. Active participation
by end users, governments, business, civil society, and
technical experts (whether as individuals or organizational
representatives) is essential to develop the policies, approve
the procedures, and write the standards that make the Internet
the efficient and effective system it is today.
We will now examine, in turn, how such multistakeholder
participation operates, specifically with respect to
Internet governance, open standard setting, and regional
development efforts.
2.2 Internet governance
Introduction
Internet governance first came to the fore at the United
Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
in 2003. WSIS was held in two phases: in Geneva in 2003,
and in Tunis in 2005. At the first summit, governments,
being confronted with difficult questions relating to Internet
governance, decided to set up a working group to examine
the issue and develop a definition of Internet governance.
The resulting Working Group on Internet Governance
(WGIG) ushered in a new form of collaboration between
governments and non-state actors, and greatly influenced
the second phase of the Summit in 2005, which adopted the
Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.
The WGIG process illustrated the importance of non-
state actors – and led to the realization by governments
that permitting an inclusive transparent structure, where
2,632Participants from 111 countries
at the IGF in Bali, Indonesia,
22-25 October 2013
[Source: Internet Governance Forum, 2014]

constructive contributions from new parties could be
incorporated, would ultimately lead to a more informed
debate and to potentially better results. WSIS by and large
endorsed the Internet model of multistakeholder cooperation
and accepted the working definition of Internet governance
proposed by WGIG, as quoted on the first page of this section.5
In the text that followed, governments went on to recognize
the important roles and expertise of stakeholder groups,
while holding for themselves “policy authority, rights and
responsibilities for international Internet-related public policy
issues”. Importantly, however, they committed:
to improve the coordination of the activities of
international and intergovernmental organizations and
other institutions concerned with Internet governance
and the exchange of information among themselves,
[stating clearly that a] multistakeholder approach should
be adopted, as far as possible, at all levels.6
The Tunis Agenda has become a foundational document in
the discussion on Internet governance, and the WSIS process
itself has come to serve as a baseline not just for Internet
governance, but also for governance discussions more broadly.
Since 2005, more governmental and intergovernmental
processes have begun experimenting with, and benefiting
from, the principles of the open, multistakeholder model
that has shaped the Internet. The result is a number of
international, regional, and national organizations, meetings,
and discussions allowing multistakeholder participation:
• The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), created by WSIS,
pioneered an open and inclusive form of multistakeholder
cooperation under the UN umbrella. The IGF is now in
its ninth year and has influenced other organizations and
processes to open up to multistakeholder cooperation.
• The 2008 OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Internet
Economy resulted in the introduction of two new advisory
committees to the OECD focusing on Internet issues, one
comprising global civil society, the second drawing on the
organizations of the Internet technical community.
• As discussed above, NTIA has announced its intention
to allow the IANA functions to evolve, based on a
multistakeholder transition process, while specifying that
NTIA’s role cannot be replaced by a government-led
solution.

50
• Several regional organizations, such as the Council
of Europe, the African Union (AU), the Inter-American
Telecommunications Commission (CITEL), the
Caribbean Telecommunication Union (CTU), and the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), have
welcomed the contributions of qualified organizations
and stakeholders to their work.
• At the national level, the Brazilian Internet Steering
Committee (CGI.br) was created by an interministerial
order in 1995, and consolidated in a presidential decree
in 2003, to address the full range of national-level Internet
governance activities on a multistakeholder basis, with
representatives of the government, corporate sector,
academia, and civil society. The Marco Civil da Internet,
the Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights, signed on 23 April
2014, aims to safeguard the rights of Internet users and
ensure that the multistakeholder approach continues to
guide the development and use of the Internet.
• In April 2014, Brazil hosted the Global Multistakeholder
Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, or
NETmundial, a multistakeholder set of discussions
on Internet Governance principles and a roadmap for
future evolution of the Internet Governance Ecosystem.
The preparations and resulting document showed
multistakeholder consensus building in action, along
with a template for further steps.
The debates that will take place in the next few years on
a variety of topics, including the evolution of the IANA
functions, are critical to the continuing evolution of the
open, multistakeholder model of Internet governance and
to the sustainability of the open Internet itself.
It is important for organizations and individuals who care
about the future of the Internet to act on the opportunities
to contribute and participate in these meetings, and
thereby to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model.
Open and inclusive processes are based on bringing civil
society, business, the Internet technical community, and
governments together to shape a common approach that
meets the challenges of an increasingly complex world.
As indicated in the results of the GIUS survey, in spite of the
coverage of a number of important governance issues in
recent years, when asked who is responsible for managing
the global Internet, only 15% of respondents correctly
indicated that the responsibility is shared among “[a]
30 Sept. 2015
Expiration of current IANA functions
contract
[Source: NTIA]

combination of government, industry, technical community
and civil society working together” (see Figure 2.3). Clearly,
it will be easier for the community to preserve and evolve
the current model if it is better understood.
Figure 2.3: Survey results
Who do you think is responsible for managing the global Internet?
20%
2%3%
3%
4%
5%
10%
10%
28%
Multi-national non-governmental organizations
The United Nations
Regional Internet Registries
Media companies (e.g. Publishers of online news sites, websites of TV stations and
other digital publishing companies, etc.)
Acombination of government, industry, technical community and civil society working together
Local or national government organizations
Software or search engine companies (e.g. Microsoft, Google)
Telecommunications companies or Internet service providers
No one
Other
Multistakeholder processes have been recognized as
a way to provide the flexibility and agility necessary to
develop timely, scalable, and innovation-enabling Internet
policies. Inclusiveness, transparency, and collaboration are
the fundamental pillars of the Internet model and must be
nurtured to preserve the benefits of the open Internet and
ensure that it remains sustainable.
Belowwepresentacasestudyonhowagroupofstakeholders
can coalesce to address important issues, in this case the
proliferation of spam.
Case study: Combating Spam Project
Unsolicited bulk electronic communication, or “spam” as
it is more commonly known, has significant economic and
consumer implications. According to Kaspersky, nearly
70% of emails sent in 2013 were spam.10
In addition to the
resources that end-users may spend to download and delete
spam, the malicious web addresses and attachments often
15%

52
present in spam can affect end users’ computing devices.
Combating spam requires a multistakeholder approach,
including governments, the technical community, network
operators, and end users. Recently, the Internet Society
launched the Combating Spam Project, to share the spam
mitigation expertise of developed world stakeholders with
interested participants in developing regions.
The Combating Spam Project evolved from discussions at the
2012 World Conference on InternationalTelecommunications
(WCIT), where developing country governments expressed
a need to combat spam, which wastes much-needed
Internet resources, thus creating a significant impact on
user costs and Internet accessibility. While the industry
and global technical community have made great strides in
creating best practices and developing the technical tools
to combat unwanted forms of electronic communication, this
information has not, in many cases, reached policymakers
and the technical communities in developing regions.
The Internet Society’s work in this area aims to help build
capacity to address spam in developing regions with three
programmes.11
The first programme focuses on developing
and collecting materials, documents, and interactive training
modules on spam. The second part of the project is a series of
workshops for policy makers, which presents best practices
and operational tools while also establishing partnerships
between experts and participants to work together to
combat spam. The third part of the project is a programme
that provides technical and operational training about spam
mitigation to technical communities in developing countries.
Three workshops were held in 2013, in Kenya and Argentina,
as well as a webinar targeted at the Latin American region.
In total, 237 participants attended these workshops and
gained concrete skills, knowledge, and strategies to
effectively combat spam on multiple levels. Feedback from
the participants included requests for additional assistance
in the use of mitigation tools, along with more information
on spam and what they can do to address the problem
within their country and region. This feedback has been
incorporated into the Combating Spam Project approach for
2014 and beyond.
Spam is a pervasive problem that requires global partnerships
to mitigate its proliferation. The Internet Society’s Combating
Spam Project focuses on filling that gap by playing an active
role in convening experts to help in the common global
fight against the negative consequences of unsolicited bulk
70%Estimated percentage of all emails
sent in 2013 that were spam
[Source: Kaspersky]

electronic communications. In addition to fighting spam,
the project demonstrates the value of partnerships and the
multistakeholder process to create a sustainable model for
engagement and problem solving.
Summary
Existing Internet governance arrangements have evolved
organically and are based on a voluntary collaboration
between the many actors in the Internet ecosystem. The
distributed nature of these arrangements corresponds to the
underlying Internet architecture and relies on a model that
allows collaboration and exchange of information between
actors that have diverse areas of expertise, knowledge,
and know-how. This model is based on multistakeholder
participation, in which all interested and relevant actors work
together, as can be seen in the example of the Combating
Spam Project.
2.3 Standardisation
Introduction
The Internet is based on open, globally accessible and
applicable technical standards — communication protocols,
dataexchangeformats,andinterfaces—whichallowdifferent
computers and networks to talk to each other. They are the
global lifeblood for multibillion-dollar industries that did not
exist 20 years ago. Standards are created in a collaborative,
open process for which success is measured by the depth
and breadth of their acceptance across a hodgepodge of
vastly different technologies that together form the network
of networks that is the Internet.
Internet standards are developed in response to the evolution
and growth of the Internet, thereby further facilitating the
exponential growth rates in adoption and usage. The
processes by which these open standards are developed
have matured along with the Internet. The development
paradigm that has been successfully used to create those
standards has emerged as an important piece of the
Internet’s widespread success.
Technology and its use evolve at a rapid pace, and
standards must be able to develop accordingly in a flexible
and scalable way. By allowing the community of Internet
technology developers and users to create and experiment,
build without requiring permission, and feed their real-world

54
experience back into the standards process, the open
development paradigm supports the uniquely innovative
character that is the hallmark of the Internet. The alternative
– an imposition of mandatory standards by a governmental
or standards body – runs contrary to this process, preventing
or inhibiting standards from developing in response to fast-
paced technological evolution and market needs.
From the beginning, the Internet’s creators understood
that, in the absence of global and interoperable standards,
networks would be fragmented and incompatible,
isolated, and unable to communicate among each other.
The technical community’s desire to develop an efficient
system of communication has driven the creation of the
Internet as we see it today. The achievement of these
technical outcomes has not been easy; it continues to
require constant commitment and re-examination of core
values to remain relevant and effective. These core values
underpinning the collaborative means of setting standards
have recently been embodied in a new set of principles
known as OpenStand.
OpenStand
In 2012, the IEEE, Internet Architecture Board (IAB),
IETF, Internet Society and W3C — five organizations
deeply involved with developing the technical standards
the Internet runs on — affirmed a set of principles called
“OpenStand”.12
These principles define the characteristics
of a modern standards paradigm that depends on the
Internet’s diversity and flexibility, making technical
excellence its primary focus.
The OpenStand principles offer a concrete picture of
the process and philosophy behind Internet standards’
development:
• cooperation among standards organizations
• adherence to due process, broad consensus,
transparency, balance, and openness in standards
development
• commitment to technical merit, interoperability,
competition, innovation, and benefit to humanity
• availability of standards to all
• voluntary adoption
7,259Total number of RFCs,
as of 20 May 2014.
[Source: IETF]

In line with this ideal, the IETF Mission Statement highlights
the fundamental value of an open model by stating:
We embrace technical concepts such as decentralized
control, edge-user empowerment and sharing of
resources, because those concepts resonate with the
core values of the IETF community. These concepts have
little to do with the technology that’s possible, and much to
do with the technology that we choose to create.13
The way standards are developed varies from one
organization to the next, but OpenStand represents a shared
commitment to open processes and consensus-based
decision making that allows for transparency and balance.
And, though the OpenStand announcement was made in
2012, this paradigm has been at the heart of the Internet’s
development from the outset. Since the announcement,
companies and other organizations that build and use the
Internet have added their support for its principles.
As the Internet continues to grow, it is increasingly important
to recognize this approach’s unique qualities and contribution
to the Internet’s overall success — and how it has been part
of the equation for successful companies and organizations
that use the Internet. The OpenStand approach has given
us the building blocks to create previously unimaginable
services and opportunities to interconnect the world’s
population. By tapping into the world’s greatest engineering
talent, and more directly translating those talents into
technical solutions, it creates the platform that generates
innovation for everyone.14
Below we present a case study of
how the OpenStand principles work in practice.
Case Study: Opus
The Opus audio codec is an excellent example of how
standards developed under the OpenStand paradigm are
key to the Internet’s future development.15
An audio codec
is needed to translate analogue audio into digital streams
for delivery, which are then turned back into analogue audio
for listening. This enables users to send and receive audio
signals, including voice and music.
A notable characteristic of codecs is that the same standard
is required at both ends – thus, the more users there are, the
more beneficial the codec. In economics, this phenomenon
is known as a network effect. In this situation, a common
standard, such as one developed using OpenStand
principles, is beneficial as it ensures that the standard meets
a broad range of needs and is widely adopted as a preferred
standard, thereby delivering the greatest network effects.

56
More and more audio is moving to the Internet, ranging
from voice-over-IP (VoIP) services to high-quality audio
streaming. As such, a codec that covered a wide range of
uses – measured by frequency ranges – is most useful.
Further, audio is delivered over a wide range of access
technologies, and thus a codec that adapts to the amount
of available bandwidth is important. The Opus codec is the
result of addressing both these challenges, thereby ensuring
high-quality audio at varying bandwidths.
The development of the Opus codec was initiated by several
companies including Skype, which had started to develop its
own variable-rate speech codec named SILK in 2007. At the
same time, Xiph.Org contributors had been working on the CELT
codec, an audio codec aimed at the most demanding audio
applications. The SILK and CELT codecs were in many respects
perfect complements to each other, which led to the creation of a
hybrid mode that would later become the Opus codec.
In 2010, a prototype of the hybrid was developed and
submitted to the IETF as a proposal for standardization.
After more than two years’ work, the Opus codec was finally
published as a RFC in September 2012 under the name
RFC 6716.16
To date, it has been adopted as the required
audio codec within WebRTC,17
resulting in support in Google
Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and other browsers that support
WebRTC. Additionally, it is supported in several open-source
softphones and a variety of audio players.18
It is worth noting that the Opus codec not only meets the
technical demands for different services delivered over
varying bandwidths, as shown in Figure 2.4, but it is also
royalty-free to ensure open and equal access to a core
Internet technology. While other codecs share these technical
characteristics, they are proprietary and patent-protected.
The story of the Opus codec illustrates how the development
of open standards is closely linked to its implementation,
through a feedback loop. Through the multistakeholder
approach, a key technological standard can be created with
the input of preferences from a broad set of actors, which in
turn are the users of the same technology. This ensures that
the technology adheres to the requirements of a variety of
applications, and the applications are interoperable. The fact
that the standard is royalty-free and accessible to anyone
increases its use as a standard and enables innovators to
build on an existing framework.
RFC 6716Definition of the Opus Audio Codec
[Source: IETF]

Figure 2.4: OPUS Codec case study
[Source Internet Society, 2014]
Frequencylevel
Bandwidth
WidebandaudioNarrowbandaudio
O
PUS
CO
DEC
The Opus Codec automatically adjusts to the bandwidth
environment. Trading sound quality for speed, the codec
allows for communication across different connection
speeds at a minimum delay.
The result is a optimization of audio quality. If the
bandwidth level goes down. Opus narrows the frequency
range that is transmitted, and coversely increases the
frequency range if the connection improves.

58
Summary
On many levels, the Internet is about uniting diversity —
bringing together communities of people with common
interests, while enabling independent networks to
communicate through established technical protocols. Those
protocols, in turn, are developed by people, collaboratively,
as open Internet standards. Standards developed with global
input from a diversity of sources through open processes
have the greatest chance of producing outcomes that are
technically exceptional, leverage cutting-edge engineering
expertise, and support interoperability and innovation in
technology markets.
2.4 Smart Development
Introduction
While much of the deployment of Internet infrastructure is
undertaken by private operators, or governments, there
are examples in which the open multistakeholder approach
is well suited to the physical development of the Internet.
At the Internet Society, we refer to this approach as Smart
Development, which recognizes that the most effective
Internet development programmes do not simply involve
deploying equipment, but have always been built on three
fundamental pillars:19
• Human infrastructure – The trained, educated, and
engaged technologists who create, populate, and
maintain networks at a local and regional level
• Technical infrastructure – The networks, connections,
routers and other hardware on which the Internet runs,
and through which the unconnected become connected
• Governance infrastructure – The frameworks, guidelines,
and rules that promote Internet use, innovation, and
expansion
Smart Development simply describes an approach that
incorporates all three of those pillars, putting individual
stakeholders, communities, nations, and regions in the
best possible position to achieve success and sustainable
Internet engagement. We now provide two case studies of
how Smart Development can help to fill gaps in access and
connectivity.
61,753Internet Society Members
18 May 2014
[Source: Internet Society]

Case study: African Internet Exchange System (AXIS)
An example of Smart Development in action is the Internet
Society’s partnership with the African Union (AU) to
implement the African Internet Exchange System (AXIS).20
This partnership continues a critical process that the Internet
community has successfully implemented for more than
twenty years – building bottom-up communities that sustain
technology and, in particular, Internet Exchange Points
(IXPs).
IXPs play a critical role in routing traffic more efficiently,
by enabling local Internet service providers (ISPs) to
exchange traffic directly with one another in the country,
rather than doing so indirectly over international transit
links. This has the benefit of reducing the latency of traffic
exchange, as it does not have to travel outside the country,
and sometimes the continent, to be exchanged, while also
saving money that was being spent on international transit
links.21
This grant project with the AU and stakeholders across Africa
aims to conduct sixty Best Practices (BP) and Technical
Assistance (TA) workshops in thirtyAfrican countries over two
years. AXIS aims to reduce Internet traffic costs, build African
expertise, and facilitate additional services and content
development. At the local level, AXIS aims to build the critical
communities that sustain an IXP, provide stakeholders with
training, and build the local Internet infrastructure to keep
“local traffic local”.
By marrying resources and expertise, and by working with
key technical experts from the IXP and Internet technical
community (including AfriNIC, Lyons-IX, France-IX, and
Jaguar Networks), this project implements the Smart
Development approach:
• it trains people and builds capacity (human infrastructure)
• it lays the groundwork for Internet infrastructure
development and technical upgrades to existing
infrastructure (technical infrastructure), and
• it works with stakeholders to ensure a participatory and
bottom-up sustainable buy-in for IXP development and
to implement best practices for IXP governance and
management (governance infrastructure).

60
Figure 2.5: AXIS workshops
Best Practice Workshops Technical Aspects Workshops New IXP Opened
IXP

Since mid-2012, the Internet Society African Regional
Bureau and Internet community experts have conducted
22 BP workshops and 15 TA workshops. The impacts of
the workshops have included: raising awareness about
international best-practices and core community building in
countries; educating government officials about the important
role of the technical community in managing and running
IXPs; and providing a platform to continue a dialogue that
will allow for IXP development in targeted countries.
The map in Figure 2.5 details the workshops that have taken
place to-date, which cover both best practices and technical
aspects of setting up an IXP. A recent success from this initiative
was the opening of the first IXPs in both Namibia and Burundi
in March 2014, one in Swaziland in April 2014, with another
scheduled to open in the Gambia in July 2014.22
As the Internet Society’s African team and expert partners
continue to provide training throughout 2014, the team will
augment its activities through funding provided by an IXPToolkit
& Best Practices grant provided by Google.org,23
and bolstered
through an equipment grant from Cisco Systems as needed.24
Case study: Wireless for Communities (W4C)
Last-mile Internet connectivity is typically provided by a for-
profit private operator deploying fixed or mobile service. In
rural areas, where it may be difficult or impossible to cover
costs, much less generate profits that attract investment,
government funds may support private deployment (often via
a universal service fund) or the government may deploy its
own service. The W4C initiative in India shows a third way,
focused on community deployment for community usage,
leveraging a Smart Development approach that has yielded
significant success in bringing new populations online.
The Internet Society, along with the Digital Empowerment
Foundation (DEF), started the W4C initiative in 2010.25
This initiative focuses on providing assistance on how to
establish and operate community wireless networks using
Wi-Fi technology, while also training the local community in
Internet use, digital literacy, and micro-entrepreneurial skills.
The pilot programme was initiated in Chanderi, India, a small
rural town with a population of 40,000, 40% of whom are
illiterate. Before 2010, there were no computers in Chanderi,
until a ‘digital design resource centre’ was set up to provide
training and the first Internet access. The resulting W4C
network covers a radius of 5 kilometres, and today 11 out of
13 schools have Wi-Fi connections, as do several computer
centres, hotels, and private homes. The network boasts 50
nodes in total, and 1,563 users.

62
The W4C initiative has moved to six more communities in
India, with a total of 4,025 new Internet users, alongside a
cadre of trainers who have been trained in deploying networks
to ensure that the system can expand further. These citizens
now have access to a number of e-government initiatives,
as well as the possibility to sell their goods beyond their
customary markets. For instance, Facebook hosts an active
market for traditional Chanderi saris.26
Summary
Smart Development represents a positive, inclusive, and
proven alternative to top-down efforts to spur development
through prescriptive regulatory fiat. It offers an apolitical,
non-interventionist method of building Internet connectivity
and engagement that is accessible anywhere in the world,
and delivers documentable, cost-effective, and replicable
results. In short, Smart Development provides the tools to
transform non-users into users, users into creators, and
creators into innovators.
2.5 Conclusion
The Internet has evolved from its creation as a research
network to become a ubiquitous platform, with an influence
that extends far beyond basic data communication. Human
networks of trust were established among Internet technical
experts, and the Internet infrastructure grew and proved its
resiliency. However, these principles are not limited to the
development of technological standards; they also provide
a basis for understanding how the Internet is governed and
how bottom-up development can occur.
By virtue of the fact that the Internet ecosystem has been
created by multistakeholder efforts, the open processes
that have enabled the Internet’s evolution and growth have
also acted to ensure the Internet itself remains open for end
users. As a result, the Internet is as open for usage as it is for
development and governance, in an infinite loop of evolution
and growth.
As such, openness represents the very essence of the
Internet’s success and must be preserved and encouraged
to allow end users, businesses, and governments to reap the
benefits of the Internet, as described in the following section.
As such, all Internet stakeholders need to work together to
protect and promote the open Internet and the underlying
principles of multistakeholder Internet governance.

64
Benefits
of an Open and
Sustainable
Internet
SECTION 03

3.1 Introduction
The open Internet has become a medium like no other, one
that merges the most notable characteristics of traditional
media such as broadcast and telecommunications, while
also augmenting them in ways that have revolutionized
aspects of civil society, business, and government.
Before the Internet, traditional mass media such as television
and newspaper were the main means through which a large
number of people could be reached. These mass media
have a number of important characteristics, however:
• First, they are ‘one-to-many’, allowing the owner, be it a
business or government, to broadcast content to viewers,
listeners, or readers
• Second, they are mainly ‘one-way’, in that they do not
allow for a return path for the receivers of the broadcast to
communicate back to the originator over the same medium
• Finally, these media essentially are limited to a national
reach, for commercial reasons or due to license conditions.1
Telecommunications, on the other hand, differs from
traditional mass media in several key ways.
• First, telecommunications are ‘one-to-one’, allowing any
user to call any other user (or at most ‘few-to-few’ with
conference calls)
• Second, they are ‘two-way’, allowing the originator and
receiver to communicate with one another equally
• Finally, telecommunications is global, with any user able
to call any other user.
2,153,212,834
Total edits in Wikimedia
Projects (including Wikipedia)
20 May 2014, 13:00 CET
[Source: tools.wmflabs.org/wmcounter]

66
The open Internet is an amplified combination of these two
media. As with mass media, it allows one-to-many broadcasts,
such as websites or blogs; and as with telecommunications it
allows one-to-one communications, such as email or instant
messages – in both cases on a global scale. However, it also
enables a new mass media paradigm of ‘many-to-many’,
allowing communications between and among all Internet
users, as well as more targeted ‘some-to-some’ collaboration
between users with common interests or goals.
As a result, the nearly 3 billion Internet users are both creators of
information as well as consumers. Websites, blogs, videos, and
tweets, can all be broadcast and accessed in the largest mass
medium imaginable. Audio and video calls and conferences
can be set up and received without regard to distance or cost.
However, these interactions are not just limited to traditional
media. Governments can use the Internet to deliver services and
levy taxes, and in turn can choose to enable citizens to elect,
petition, and oversee their governments online. Entrepreneurs
not only have new markets for their goods or services, but also
a new means to raise money online to finance their dreams.
Likewise, entertainers have a new global medium to share or
sell their endeavours, while new artists can be discovered and
grow online. See Figure 3.1 for an overview of the examples in
this section.
Figure 3.1: Section overview
EXAMPLES OF THE OPEN AND SUSTAINABLE INTERNET
End usersGovernment Business
Education
E-government
Participation
Collaboration
Sharing
Entertainment
Innovation
E-commerce
With open access to the Internet and an appropriate enabling
environment, the resulting benefits of the Internet are limited
only by the imagination and efforts of its users. Here we provide
some examples that demonstrate the value of the open Internet
for creating benefits among the global users of the Internet.
Conversely, as we show in the following section, differences
in user experience across countries, whether based on the
digital divide, or based on limited access to content and
applications, reduce these benefits for all users.

Box 2: Survey result
The Internet is essential for my access to knowledge and education
3.2 The Internet is Open for Education
One of the most notable trends in recent years is the increased
focus on the Internet as a platform for education. The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) jump-started
the movement in 2001 by introducing the OpenCourseWare
project to put their course materials online, beginning in
2002.2
Subsequent to MIT’s announcement, UNESCO held
a forum on open courseware in 2002 where the term “Open
Educational Resources” was coined, adopting the following
definition: “The open provision of educational resources,
enabled by information and communication technologies, for
consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users
for non-commercial purposes.”3
Significant work has gone into open educational resources
since 2002, with a number of universities around the
world joining MIT in publishing courseware, and UNESCO
continuing to be active in promoting this movement. As
of 2014, MIT announced that it has published materials
from 2150 courses. At the primary and secondary level,
Bangladesh digitized all textbooks and has made them
available online for free.4
More recently, Massive Online Open Courses, commonly
referred to under the acronym ‘MOOCs’, have emerged.
These courses broadcast classroom lectures, either in real
time or via streaming, and can be standalone or part of a
more traditional course that includes homework and exams.
Although the Internet is
considered important for
access to knowledge and
education globally, the
survey respondents in
the developing regions
perceive it as more
important, likely given the
opportunity it provides to
overcome local shortfalls
0%
100%
(USA)
152,347,354
Total online visits to MIT
OpenCourseWare as of March 2014.
[Source: MIT OpenCourseWare]
Somewhat disagree Strongly agreeDon’t know / Not applicable Strongly disagree Somewhat agree

68
Box 3: Survey results
The Internet can play a signfiicant role in improving the quality of education
The separation of teacher and student in time and space
is not new. Early examples of organized forms of distance
education can be traced back as early as the 1840s and the
Phonographic Correspondence Society that offered courses
in shorthand writing through postcards. Postcards may have
been replaced by bytes, but the core remains, of lessons
delivered through a contemporary means of communication
to increase the reach of education.
In both cases, education adapted to new means of access.
The development of distance education in 19th century
England was, for example, enabled by the so-called ‘penny
post’, a reform that cut the cost of postal services for the
large public. Likewise, online education benefits from the
decreasing costs of Internet access worldwide, which has
broadened the potential student base – just as in the case of
the penny post.
The difference today is the scale, as seen in Figure 3.2. Where
the old form of distance learning was confined to a national
or regional student base, the Internet is global. Students who
used to be restricted by geographical or economic constraints
are now able to attend classes provided by the top-tier
universities in the world, regardless of where they live.
The relationship is mutually beneficial – students get access
to top education, and universities get access to a student
body that may contain the next Einstein. A good example of
this relationship is the story of Battushig Myanganbayar, a 15-
year old from Mongolia who was discovered and accepted at
both UC Berkeley and MIT after obtaining a perfect score in
MIT’s online class “Circuits and Electronics”.5
There is a clear
belief that the
Internet can play
an important
role in improving
the quality of
education, not least
in Africa and Latin
America.
0%
100%
(USA)

10 millionStudents who have registered for MOOCs (Class Central)
33,000:1Average number of students enrolled per class
(Edudemic)
Figure 3.2: Massive Online Open Course Statistics
[Source: Internet Society, Class Central, Edudemic, 2014]
61.5%Students from outside the USA. (Edudemic)
20%The largest category of
MOOC is Humanities
(Class Central)
1,200+Number of MOOC courses
(Class Central)

70
The demand for online education is only likely to increase. For
example, UNESCO has estimated that 80 million additional
people will be seeking higher education by 2025.6
To meet
this increasing demand with traditional campuses, three new
universities, accommodating 40,000 students each, would
have to be established every week for the next 12 years.
Online education is able to meet this demand in theory, but
in practice it is still evolving.
Online education is an efficient means of reaching a global
audience, because the production and delivery exhibits
economies of scale – once the course is developed, there is
little additional cost of delivering it multiple times, anywhere
in the world. As a result, the cost to the students can be lower
than a traditional education, to the extent that the provider
wishes to charge fees.
Language may be an issue, however. Many universities
providing MOOCs, for instance, are predominantly American
with English being the primary language for course
production, irrespective of country of origin. This present
dominance, together with a business model inherently linked
to economies of scale, may thus consolidate English as
the lingua franca of online education, creating a potential
language as well as cultural barrier to participation.
Finally, the underlying hurdle to overcome in order to make
online education viable an alternative to traditional forms
of education around the world is technical. In particular, in
addition to the basic reach of Internet access, the bandwidth
of the connection is important to enable live-streamed
lectures or videoconferences used in the teaching. Without
the required speed, it is simply not possible to participate in
elements of the course.7
Summary
While it is true that the challenges of online education have
not all been met, it is equally true that the opportunities would
not be possible without the open Internet. As the digital
divide is bridged, educational opportunities will increase in
underserved markets the world over, at lower costs. The
students reached through these efforts will no doubt make
their mark on all endeavours, including new innovations
that will continue to enable the Internet to grow and remain
sustainable.
As noted recently by Hal Varian, Chief
Economist for Google:
The biggest impact on the world [of
the Internet-enabled revolution in
education] will be universal access to
all human knowledge. The smartest
person in the world currently could well
be stuck behind a plow in India or China.
Enabling that person – and the millions
like him or her – will have a profound
impact on the development of the
human race. Cheap mobile devices will
be available worldwide, and educational
tools like the Khan Academy will be
available to everyone. This will have a
huge impact on literacy and numeracy
and will lead to a more informed and
more educated world population.8

3.3 The Internet is Open for Government
A number of governments have chosen to conduct elements
of governance and the democratic process partially, or
entirely, online. This starts with campaigns and elections
and allows the electorate to continue their involvement and
influence over government behaviour through petitions and
other means of online engagement. Additionally, a large
number of countries now have online portals for paying taxes
to provide funding for government functions, and many offer
a wide and growing variety of e-government services online.
The wide reach and many-to-many communication properties
of the open Internet make it particularly well suited to these
purposes. Of course, governments must choose to create
an enabling environment for citizen engagement, and in turn
citizens must have access to the Internet and appropriate
online literacy to use these services.
Online political campaigns
Election campaigns are increasingly run online. Google
has sought to assist voters in researching their choices by
developing a Politics and Elections hub, which launched
during the run-up to the 2012 USA election.9
The page aims
to group online resources related to the candidates and
election in one place, making resources easier to find and
review. Information provided included trend data on Google
searches, Google News mentions, and YouTube video views
for each candidate, giving an indication of their popularity.
While initially targeting the USA election, the site has since
covered elections across a number of countries, including
Chile, Japan, and Australia. As shown in Figure 3.3, for the
Chilean election, the resulting search term data gave insight
into the election race, which was won by Michelle Bachelet
on 15 December 2013.
The Italian MoVimiento 5 Stelle (M5S) movement is an
example of a political party that has taken advantage of
online campaigning in the run-up to the 2013 general election
in Italy. The party was launched in 2009 in response to the
corruption being reported in Italian politics and advocates
participatory democracy, including e-democracy. To this end,
the party engages with supporters online, incorporating their
opinions in decision- making to make them active participants
rather than passive followers.
Figure 3.3: Indexed volumes of searches
for the presidential candidates in the
2013 Chilean election
[Source: Google Trends, 2013]
Indexedsearchfrequency
0
22nov2013
07dic2013
27nov2013
12dic2013
17dic2013
02dic2013
100
Matthei
Bachelet

72
Twitter followers (thousand)
The e-democracy was put into practice in the M5S primary
election, which was conducted entirely online. In that
election, 95,000 virtual ballots were counted to select the
party’s candidates for the General Election and the party
leader, the comedian Beppe Grillo, stated afterward that this
was done “at zero cost – we didn’t even spend a euro”.10
The party also operates an online TV channel11
and Beppe
Grillo’s blog,12
which can be used by potential voters to
interact with him, is the most widely read in Italy.13
On Twitter,
he has around four times the number of followers of any of
the other presidential candidates for the election, with over
1.3 million, as shown in Figure 3.4.
Similarly, Grillo has over 1.4 million likes for his Facebook
page. A survey of 2,245 of these followers, conducted by
Demos, found that 20% of the respondents say they are
‘formal members of M5S’,14
indicating that the movement
has likely been successful in moving its supporters beyond
simply following the party via social media and on to formal
party membership.
Partly as a result of this online campaigning, the party was
able to go, in four years, from launch to receiving 25.5%
of the popular vote in the 2013 election, thereby achieving
more seats in the House of Deputies, 108, than any other
single party.15
Figure 3.4: Twitter followers of candidates in the Italian presidential election, in December 2013
Grillo
1,348,978
Bersani
360,213
Monti
101,917
Berlusconi
266,657

How much has access to the Internet contributed to civil action or political awareness in your country?
Online elections
While the M5S party conducted its primary election over
the Internet, several governments have also begun to
experiment with online voting for the national election. While
India, Kazakhstan, Brazil, and the Philippines have used
some element of electronic voting in past elections, the
majority of electronic voting to date has been in Europe and
North America.
Estonia was the first country to host legally binding elections
over the Internet when it ran a pilot scheme during the 2005
local elections. The success of this scheme encouraged
the country to continue using online voting for the 2009 and
2013 local elections and the 2007 and 2011 parliamentary
elections. Online votes can be submitted at any time during
the early voting period and can be changed an unlimited
number of times, with only the final submission counted. As
can be seen in Figure 3.5, the proportion of votes generated
online is now in the region of 20% of total votes in Estonia.16
The rapid uptake of online voting in Estonia can be explained
inpartbythefactthat,asof19December2013,approximately
1.21 million of the 1.34 million inhabitants possess a national
ID card that enables secure remote authentication and can
provide a legally binding digital signature.17
This type of ID
card, with its many possibilities for online activities, does,
however, raise a few concerns regarding security and privacy.
Figure 3.5: Proportion of votes
generated online in the Estonian
elections, 2005–2013
[Source the Estonian National Electoral Committee, 2013]
Proportionofvotessubmitted
online
0
2005
2011
2007
2013
2009
25%
The graph illustrates the
impact of the Internet
on political awareness,
with more positive
results particularly in
Africa.
Somewhat SignificantlyNot at all Not very much A lot
0%
100%
(USA)

74
Online lobbying and campaigning for change
Once a government or parliamentary representative has been
elected, the Internet provides channels for the electorate
to continue to influence policy and hold its elected officials
accountable. These channels can be both government-run,
as discussed in the examples below, or privately run, as
discussed in the following sub-section.
Both the UK and USA governments operate e-petition sites
that respectively will put an issue forward for debate in the
UK House of Commons or receive an official response from
the USA government, if sufficient signatures are received.
The UK site allows any e-petition that receives at least
100,000 signatures to be considered for debate. For instance,
a petition to reconsider the decision to award the West Coast
Mainline rail franchise18
to FirstGroup was allocated a debate
slot on 17 September 2012.19
This petition (along with court
proceedings commenced by another competitor for the
franchise, Virgin Trains) led to the overturning of the decision
to award the franchise and the reopening of the competitive
bid process.20
The White House also runs an e-petition site that seeks
to promote the First Amendment right to petition the
government.21
With enough support, White House staff will
review the petition, ensure that it is sent to the appropriate
policy experts, and issue an official response. As of January
2013, 100,000 signatures in 30 days is the threshold for
consideration. These petitions can be serious policy issues,
such as the question of reform of the banking sector,22
or
more frivolous ones, such as the August 2012 request for the
release of the White House beer recipe23
or the November
2012 request to secure resources and funding and begin
construction of a Death Star from the movie Star Wars.24
Tax administration and collection
The Internet can also be used for running various aspects
of government, particularly taxation. The Kenya Revenue
Authority (the Kenyan tax collection agency) has migrated
much of its activities online. Kenyans can use the site to
file tax returns, and businesses can interact with customs
for declarations of goods and imports.25
Similarly, in the
UK much of the tax system can be managed online, and
on 5 December 2013 the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
George Osborne, announced in his autumn statement that
from October 2014, the tax disc to show motorists have
paid vehicle excise duty is to be entirely replaced with an
electronic system.26

E-government
E-government initiatives are an area of increasing interest
for governments and the public, given their potential to
revolutionize how governments use technology to provide
public services more broadly and with greater efficiency.
E-government covers a multitude of services. For example,
in the Asia-Pacific region, e-government initiatives have
been explored since the mid-1990s to enable governments
to spearhead various initiatives of national interest, including
poverty reduction, mass education, universal healthcare
services, anti-corruption drives, open governance, and
promoting business and investments, among other topics.
The spread of these initiatives has been fostered, and
studied, by a variety of organizations. For instance, the World
Bank has an Open Government Data Toolkit, which provides
resources and describes the benefits of Open Government
initiatives.27
Waseda University in Japan has an Institute of
e-government, which ranks e-government programs based
on a variety of indicators such as the digitalization of citizen
consultation, taxation, and the electronic provision of social
security services.28
Singapore has long been at the top of the Waseda ranking
and was recognized as the leading country in 2013.29
With
long-term strategies of continuously developing new digital
solutions for the provision of public services, the government
has implemented a series of e-government master plans,
the latest of which is eGov2015, and initiatives include
the OneInBox, which replaces hard-copy correspondence
from the government.30
To support the overall approach,
the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA)
has “a national role to identify and facilitate the adoption
of infocomm technologies to enhance Singapore’s
competitiveness” across a variety of key sectors including
education, healthcare, and government.31
Summary
The use of the Internet for campaigning, accountability and
government financing is a growing trend, empowering citizens
and facilitating greater efficiency and reach of government
services. However, as discussed further in Section 4, some
governments have chosen to block or filter access to certain
content and applications, discouraging or forbidding citizens
from participation, while in other countries, governments’
efforts to leverage the Internet may be slowed by a digital
divide preventing citizens from going online.
€0Stated cost for MoVimento 5 Stelle
party to hold primary online, in which
95,000 ballots were cast.
According to party leader Beppo Grillo

76
3.4 The Internet is Open for Participation
As discussed in the previous section, governments
can host petitions to garner feedback and suggestions
from citizens. However, the Internet enables citizens to
participate in ways beyond those encouraged or even
allowed by national governments.
In particular, the Internet can act as a digital Speaker’s
Corner, allowing users to air grievances, gather support,
organize, and take collective action, creating a global
version of Hyde Park. The activism can target local,
national, or international issues, and focus not just on
governments but also businesses.
Online advocacy
Online advocacy is not limited to local organization and
politics, with a number of websites in existence that host
international petitions relating to a range of topics, from
climate change and corruption to the policies of retail
companies and television programming schedules.32
For instance, Avaaz was launched in January 2007 as an
international citizen’s group and it has seen a rapid increase
in membership. It campaigns in 15 languages across 194
countries, and in the words of The Guardian newspaper in
the UK, “has exploded to become the globe’s largest and
most powerful online activist network”.33
From its January 2007 launch to December 2013, Avaaz
has been involved in 166 million ‘actions’.34
These have
included fighting corruption in India, Italy, and Brazil;
protecting the world’s oceans, rainforests, and endangered
wildlife; and defending Internet and media freedoms.
Change.org is another organization that facilitates online
advocacy; since its February 2007 launch it has grown
to a user base of over 40 million across 196 countries.35
While it is open for anyone to start a petition about any
local or international issue, the site is funded by running
advertisements or sponsored petitions for not-for-
profit groups and political campaigns, such as Amnesty
International.
One case, with a national business focus, in which change.
org was able to influence the outcome, was that of Bank
of America’s proposals to introduce a USD5/month
35,739,246
Avaaz members
worldwide
20 May 2014 13:30 CET
[Source: Avaaz]

banking fee to their USA customers. In October 2011, a
22-year-old American nanny, Molly Katchpole, started a
petition that received over 300,000 signatures, including
that of President Barack Obama. By November 2011, the
proposed fee was cancelled.36
Additionally, independent sites are using the Internet in
an attempt to fight corruption and keep politicians honest.
The ipaidabribe.org initiative was developed in India, by
the not-for-profit organization Janaagraha, and allows
citizens to report on the details of any acts of corruption
they encounter. ipaidabribe.org uses these reports to
argue for improving governance systems, procedures,
and regulation to reduce the scope for corruption. From
the launch of the site in August 2010 to December 2013,
18,000 Indians have reported paying bribes with a total
value of INR592 million (USD9.5 million).37
This initiative
has been adopted elsewhere, operating in 11 countries at
the end of 2013 and is expected to arrive in 12 further
countries in the near future.
In Cambodia, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights
(CCHR), which promotes democracy and protects human
rights in the country, has become a good example of how
advocacy can be made effective using the Internet and
its outreach activities.38
CCHR’s progressive outlook and
innovative management has also garnered it many awards
and recognition from the international community.
The organization’s project Sithi.org is a good example
of how the Internet is an important tool to gather and
spread information about the human rights situation
in Cambodia. By collecting reports from human rights
activists, organizations, and even regular citizens from
across the country, the project has created a unique
database of human rights violations. Through a simple
online reporting system, registered users can file reports
and provide detailed information of the nature of the abuse.
This provides important information about the extent of
violations in general but additionally identifies types of
abuse and if there are sector-specific problems.
Internet-assisted engagement
In the 2011 uprising in Egypt that resulted in the resignation
of President Mubarak on 11 February 2011, the Internet
in general, and social media in particular, was used for a
number of purposes including spreading awareness of the
issues, organising the protests, and acting as an alternative

78
press to report on the details to the wider world. Egypt is one
of a number of countries in which activists made use of the
Internet to further their cause during the Arab Spring and
beyond.
Of particular note in raising awareness of the plight of the
Egyptian people under President Mubarak was the creation of
theFacebookgroup‘WeareallKhaledSaid’39
inJuly2010,after
the young blogger was arrested and beaten to death by police
officers. This became a prominent platform for dissemination
of information on the case and the government’s response.
At the peak of its popularity, the group had over 400,000
members and was used to spread word of the planned protest
in Tahrir Square on 25 January 2011.
In response to these protests, the Egyptian government
shut down the Internet access services in the country on
26 January 2011 (see Section 4.2 for more examples of
government shutdowns). In order to maintain the ability for
Egyptians to continue communicating with the rest of the
world and report events on the ground, engineers at Google
and Twitter combined forces to create speak2tweet,40
a
service that allowed users to call an international number
and leave a voice message which would then be transposed
into a tweet.
During the uprisings, social media in Egypt was dominated
by the events unfolding. As can be seen in Figure 3.6, when
surveyed retrospectively, Egyptian Facebook users believed
that 85% of Facebook use at the time was in some way
related to the protests.
Figure 3.6: Proportion of Facebook use for different purposes during the uprising according to
Egyptian Facebook users
[Source: Dubai School of Government, 2013]
Raise awareness inside the country on the causes of the movements
Organize actions and manage activists (teams or individuals)
Other
Entertainment and social uses: Connect with friends, games etc
Spread information to the world about the movement and related events
29.55%
24.05%
30.93%
12.37%
3.09%

What type of role do you believe the Internet can play in improving the economic situation in your country for
using technology to run a better business?
[Internet Society, Global Internet User Survey, 2014]
Additionally, 94% of these users got at least some of their
news during the uprising from social media41
and ‘#jan25’,
in reference to the Tahrir Square protest, became one of the
highest trending twitter hashtags in the region during the first
quarter of 2011, with over 1.2 million mentions.
Summary
The ability of the Internet to allow its users to reach such a wide
audienceallowsforcitizenadvocacytoexistatanunprecedented
international level. This is generating reform across the globe,
allowing Internet users to influence businesses, governments,
and industry regulators. Government involvement in this trend
is mixed across countries, with a broad spectrum of reactions
ranging from active encouragement to shutting off the Internet at
the height of protests, as shown further in Section 4. Regardless
of the government acceptance, however, users have often
managed to leverage the open Internet to route around any
challenges in order to continue with their activities.
3.5 The Internet is Open for Business
By creating a potential market of billions of users, the Internet
is a natural venue to conduct business, both for traditional ‘brick-
and-mortar’ retailers as well as new online businesses that have
emerged, such as Amazon.com, which in many cases compete
stronglywithtraditionalvendors.However,themany-to-manynature
of the Internet has also led to the emergence of a new segment of
retailers, which are essentially online street markets that provide a
platform in which anyone can sell to anyone else with low costs.
The graph shows that
the Internet is believed
to play an important role
for business, in particular
in developing regions,
in recognition of the role
that the Internet can play
in ‘leapfrogging’ gaps
in existing traditional
offerings.
Significant roleNo role at all Minor role
0%
100%
(USA)

80
E-commerce
In general, online selling of goods and services can be
categorized as e-commerce and includes sales of digital
material, such as streaming media as well as physical
goods. These sales can take place via auction, digital trading
marketplaces, and online shops. The size of the e-commerce
market is growing internationally, as shown in Figure 3.7, with
growth coming from both increases in customer volumes
and spending per customer.42
Growth is robust in all regions,
including emerging markets in the Middle East and Africa.
Eastern Europe
Asia-PacificNorth America
Middle East andAfrica
Latin America
Western Europe
Annualbusinesstocustomer
e-commercespend(USDbillion)
0
2,000
2011 2012 2013* 2014* 2015* 2016*
Figure 3.7: Annual spending on e-commerce by region
[Source: eMarketer, 2013]
By leveraging the reach of the Internet, retailing has
transformed from a local to a national or international affair,
thereby increasing the number of potential buyers. At the
same time, the Internet has lowered the cost of selling and
increased the number of vendors. Etsy is a good example
of a successful e-commerce marketplace, which focuses on
the sale of unique handmade or vintage items.
Etsy sellers are able to immediately take advantage of the global
customer base provided by the Internet, and the awareness of
the Etsy marketplace within that. Not only is there an instant
customer base available, but also sellers are able to launch
with low up-front investment; in a survey, 35% of sellers stated
their shop did not require much investment, with only 1% taking
out a bank loan. As a result, Etsy hosts over 1 million ‘shops’
or sellers, each of whom pays a fee of USD0.20 to list each
item in their personal storefront. In 2012, USD895million of
merchandise was sold to customers across 200 countries.44
E-commerce can enable trade in areas with a relatively
underdeveloped retail sector. This is very much the case in
CAGR
26%
20%
18%
11%
12%
25%

What type of role do you believe the Internet can play in improving the economic situation in your country for
expanding the availability of goods and services on-line?
developing countries where the demand of a growing middle class
can be met through online services, which can be offered with less
overheadthanopeningtraditionalretailshops.Regionaldifferences
in payment systems and online access can be overcome by
targeted services that adapt to the specific environment.45
The Nigerian company Jumia.com is one example of how
e-commercecancreatebusinessincountrieswithagrowingmiddle
class. With a presence in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Kenya, and
Morocco, the company offers more than 100,000 products that can
be ordered online, through SMS, phone, or agents.
Competitive effects
In addition to enabling an increase in online retailing, the
Internet also allows customers to find more information
about products they wish to buy than ever before, particularly
with regard to prices. This increased price transparency can
be delivered through customer searches or via specialized
sites and smartphone apps. Such price transparency helps
increase the efficiency of retail markets, and encourages
retailers to price more competitively.
KAYAK,46
launched in 2004, is one example of a price
comparison service, which focuses on travel, particularly
flights, hotels, and car rentals. It enables the easy comparison
of hundreds of options at once, so that consumers can find
the best deals available. While these deals could be found
by review of each individual site, such services significantly
reduce the time required, and users may find offers that
would otherwise have been missed.
There is clearly a positive
belief in the Internet’s
ability to improve the
economic situation in
general. As indicated by
the data, this belief is even
stronger in developing
markets, most notably
Africa where more than
80% ascribe the Internet a
“significant role”.
0%
100%
(USA)

82
Ofcourse,atthesametime,theInternetisadisruptivetechnology,
as e-commerce has a downside for traditional vendors. For
instance, many products such as books, music, and video,
can be sampled, ordered, and delivered online, leading to the
retrenchment of retail staff or bankruptcy of large numbers of
traditional retailers that were slow, or unable to respond to the
challenges.
While consumers may be hesitant to purchase other items, such
as clothes, without at least seeing them, a phenomenon known
as ‘showrooming’ has emerged, whereby consumers make their
choices in stores and then buy the items online, with predictable
negative effects for the stores, and those suppliers that rely on
the stores to attract customers.47
Indeed, in markets where it is
available, the Amazon Price Check App allows consumers to
scan a product barcode in the store, determine whether Amazon
offers a cheaper price, and order the product immediately.48
The business downside of the Internet is not restricted to retailers,
as it has fundamentally challenged a host of industries including
entertainment, travel, and journalism, among others, while also
facilitating outsourcing that has shifted jobs to lower cost countries.
It is thus important, when considering the impact of entrepreneurs
using the Internet to disrupt business, and the consumers who
benefit from that, to take into account the traditional businesses
that have been disrupted and ensure that they have the capacity
to also leverage the Internet to fully compete.
Summary
The Internet opens up global markets for businesses, allowing
start-up firms immediate access to a wide, international customer
base directly or via an intermediary market. Additionally the
Internet is encouraging innovation and promoting consumer
interests by giving them access to increased information, both in
terms of pricing and quality of products and services, for example
with online reviews, to enable individuals to make the most well-
informed decisions about spending. The downside, however,
should not be ignored, as the Internet is disruptive for many
traditional sectors.
3.6 The Internet is Open for Sharing
The idea of collaborative consumption is not new. For
instance, hunter-gatherer societies often made use of the
‘social refrigerator’, wherein, following a successful hunt, tribe
members shared surplus meat that would spoil in the absence
of an actual refrigerator. In return, the hunter could expect meat
in the future when other tribe members had a successful hunt.

Trust was implicit, as the tribes were small and members were
interdependent for survival.
Today, members of modern societies acquire much more than
food in their day-to-day lives: automobiles, dwellings, and money,
for starters. This capital is not always used in part or fully, and
capital not used is ‘wasted’, at least in a temporal sense. In order
to capitalize on unused assets, a ‘sharing economy’ has arisen
in which owners of capital can rent it to others when not in use,
while simultaneously creating the trust mechanisms needed to
protect both sides of the transaction.
If sharing was once caring, it can also be a business today.
Innovative websites have enabled small-scale entrepreneurship,
where private apartments become hotels, a family’s mini-van turns
into a taxi, and queuing an occupation. Just as the money in a bank
account is lent to a borrower that pays interest, so can renting out
a boat generate an income. For its owner, capital goods that were
acquired for own consumption now have a productive value that
can generate an income.
There are two key developments that enable this sharing
economy, as highlighted in Figure 3.8.
The first can be illustrated by websites such as AirBnB, Lyft, or
TaskRabbit, which are the driving forces behind the growth of the
sharing economy, using their innovative solutions and ability to
generateacriticalmassofusers.Asaresultoftheirscaleandscope,
a service that was once offered on the noticeboard at the local
supermarket is now advertised globally through a refined system
that allows strangers to do business at low costs and by facilitating
the complete process of contracting − from the introduction of buyer
to seller to the payment and delivery arrangements.
Second, the real innovation in the sharing economy lies with
solutions to communicate trust, which is essential to transactions
involving significant amounts of capital or personal interaction.
Just as trust among the members in a hunter-gather society
enabled the inter-temporal sharing of food through the social
refrigerator, so is trust needed to rent a stranger your car or a
room in your house.
Trust in the sharing economy is often communicated through a
feedback system, identifying the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ users. As such,
it is a crucial part of business, valued by both buyers and sellers,
making the provision of trust a business idea in itself. Websites
such as Fidback or TrustCloud are specifically designed to produce
an online reputation that is based on information across different
websites, increasing both the benefit of being trustworthy and the
consequencesofviolatingtrust.Insomecases,suchasAirBnB,trust
is enhanced through insurance that is offered on transactions. 49
1,122,257,615
Total US dollars pledged to
Kickstarter projects.
20 May 2014 11:46 CET
[Source: Kickstarter]

84
Figure 3.8: The sharing economy
CAPITALINTERMEDIARYUSERS
AirBnB
1
4M
guests
Lyft / Uber /
BlaBlaCar
2
1M
rides
with Lyft
BoatBound
3
20K
users
SurfAir /
BlackJet
4
18
flights per
day with
SurfAir
Ulele / Kiva /
Kickstarter
5
61K
successfully
funded projects
with Kickstarter
SwapStyle
6
4M
items
swapped
TaskRabbit
7
15K
active
TaskRabbits TRUST
Through:Ratings,AirBnBInsurance,Fidback,TrustCloud

Summary
The sharing economy is both something new and something
old. As illustrated by history, humans have always found social
arrangements to share their consumption. Whether it is the meat
of a deer or the use of a car, sharing it with others optimizes
consumption. The new thing is the innovative arrangements,
enabled by technology, which create the trust needed to do
business with strangers. If the collaborative consumption was
once limited to the tribe, that tribe has now gone online and
become global.
3.7 The Internet is Open for Innovation
The Internet is not only the result of innovation, it is also a
significant facilitator. We have illustrated in the previous sections
how the Internet can provide an entrepreneur with all the basic
ingredients for innovation: education, research to gather ideas,
capital for investment, and a marketplace for the results.
Without the Internet, access to the building blocks of innovation
can be challenging, not least in the WestAfrican country of Togo,
categorized as a so-called ‘Least Developed Country’ (LDC)50
by
the United Nations and ranked by the World Bank as one of the
most difficult countries in which to do business.51
However, as
shown by the story of the W.Afate 3D Printer, creativity can still
have a chance through the hard work of dedicated individuals,
facilitated by Internet access.
WoeLab is a small business incubator situated in the capital
of Lomé. As a small community of creative people, sharing a
common philosophy of collaborative work based on open-source
technology, WoeLab represents the resourceful spirit that is the
foundation of innovation around the world. This spirit is embodied
in one WoeLab participant, Kodjo Afate Gnikou, the inventor of
the W.Afate 3D Printer, who sees in the mountains of e-waste
(see box) an opportunity for business.
Using the components often found amongst discarded
electronics, Mr Gnikou began sketching a 3D printer that could
be built using only e-waste. To fund the project, Mr Gnikou and
WoeLab set up a fundraising campaign on the crowdfunding
website Ulule in March 2013. By the middle of June, the project
had already reached its fundraising goal of USD4,000.

86
Basedonanexisting3Dprinterdesignavailableonline,thePrusa
Mendel model, the W.Afate prototype is unique. At a production
cost of only USD100, the 3D printer integrates e-waste gathered
from old computers, printers, and scanners found in local
dumping places, alongside a few new parts such as motors that
had to be purchased.53
The W.Afate 3D printer is about more than the clever use of
e-waste: it is about showing that all countries can be a part of
the new technological revolution thanks to increasing Internet
access. The fact that the W.Afate printer is part of this revolution
wasconfirmedbytheproject’snominationtoNASA’sInternational
Space Apps Challenge, a competition for technology that can
contribute to space exploration, including a mission to Mars.54
The crowdfunding that helped develop the 3D printer not
only matches investors with inventors, it can also eliminate
bottlenecks and provide a closer link between innovation and
consumer demand. The Pebble watch is the perfect example of
this process, in which an inventor presented an idea that spoke
to a demand that major companies had not yet addressed.
The Pebble is a watch that communicates with a smartphone,
enabling users to see alerts, control the phone, and use new
apps that take advantage of the accessibility of the watch, such
as providing times when running. It is to-date the most successful
fundingprojectatKickstarter,raisingUSD10,266,845fromalmost
69,000 investors who received discounts on their watches.55
It is
arguably also the most successful Kickstarter project in having
launched an entirely new segment, the smartwatch, which has
so far seen Samsung and Sony join the ranks, with others set to
follow.
Box 7: E-waste
The rapid developments of past decades have led to a flood of new technology and devices, which
are in turn continually improved according to Moore’s law and new innovations. The downside of
these developments is the increase in electronic, or e-waste.
By one estimate, up to 50 million tonnes of e-waste was created last year. Some discarded items
are re-used, others recycled, and a significant amount is left in landfills, often toxic due to the
materials used.
The high costs of recycling have in turn led to an extensive North-South trade in e-waste,
sometimes legal but often illegal, with massive landfills in the developing world as a result.52

WoeLab
OPEN COMMUNITY LAB FOR PEER LEARNING
Lome, Togo
133Different
countries
€3,500
Average
funding per
project
62%Rate of
success
15Average new
project per
day
4,982
projects
financed
€48Average
contribution
Ulule6 Languages
50M
TONNES OF E-WASTE EACH YEAR
Worlwide
W. Afate 3D Printer
Fund-raising and e-waste are used to make
for
disposal
€4,313
funding
received
112supporters
some of which is shipped
to developing countries
from Ulule fund-raising
from Ulule fund-raising
$100cost of the
3D printer
Nominated for NASA’s
International
Space App
Challenge
Figure 3.9: W.Afate 3D Printer
[Source: WoeLab, Ulule, The Guardian, Internet Society, 2014]

88
What type of role do you believe the Internet can play in improving the economic situation in your
country for allowing entrepreneurs to conduct business through the Internet across all countries?
0%
100%
(USA)
Summary
Innovation does not just require inspiration, it also requires
research, funding, and a sales channel. While nothing can
replace a good idea, the open Internet can provide all the
other ingredients needed to turn the idea into an innovation,
and the innovation into income. This does not just mean
that entrepreneurs such as those behind the Pebble watch
can emerge to take on the largest companies in the world,
but that local innovators can address local challenges and
opportunities, turning e-waste in Togo into a printer that can
allow others to invent and create new products and help
develop a cycle of innovation.
3.8 The Internet is Open for Collaboration
The Internet is the result of a broad collaboration among its
founders, and the resulting spirit of collaboration has spread
to many diverse activities, facilitated by the open Internet.
User contributions, from the origins of the Internet to present
day, have fostered a culture of cooperation that is as vital to
its continued development as any of its technical parts. Open
standards and software have long represented this culture
but have also inspired and contributed to collaborative
projects with goals beyond the digital realm.
There is clearly
a strong belief
in the Internet’s
role for promoting
entrepreneurship
globally, but even
more so in the
developing world.

Collaboration continues to be the driver of developing the
standards underlying the Internet. The work of organizations
such as the IETF or open-source software developers behind
Mozilla continuously push the digital frontier through the joint
effort of dispersed individuals.56
GitHub is a good example
of efforts to promote such developments by providing a
platform specifically designed to facilitate collaboration in
the development of new software.57
It is an innovation for
innovations, providing a catalyst to the decentralized type
of cooperation that has signified the Internet’s creation and
evolution.
Wikipedia, the online user-generated, free-content
encyclopaedia, is a leading example of the potential for
collaborative efforts to create one of the most widely visited
websites around the world. There were, as of March 2014,
287 different versions of Wikipedia, separated by language.
These vary in size from the original English language
Wikipedia, with over 32 million total pages, to the Herero58
language with just 118 pages.59
Visitor numbers are growing
globally, with 530 million unique visitors in October 2013 up
from 277 million in October 2008.60
At the same time, as of
April 2014, users had made over 2.3 billion edits to existing
and new pages.61
Collaboration extends well beyond the development of
the Internet. Fold.it is an example of an innovative form of
collaboration for scientific research that has been enabled
by the Internet.62
By making use of the so-called gamification
technique, individual users are engaged in protein folding
simulations to help fight diseases. By playing what appears to
be a three-dimensional puzzle, the player is actually helping
science to understand how different protein structures fold
into their functional shapes. This innovative way of using
volunteers’ creativity has not only resulted in important
contributions to the study of protein folding, but also to a
broader field of science by collecting data on humans’
pattern-recognition, which could be used to teach human
strategies to computers.
Summary
The Internet is the result of open collaboration, as well as
a facilitator of collaboration across fields. As a platform for
instant communication with a global reach, it can facilitate
cooperation with participation from all corners of the world.
The result is not only innovative applications of existing
technology, but also the development of new ones.

90
Social media
Social media platforms have made it easy to reach many more
people than more traditional media formats, which are often
constrained by national borders. For example, the newspaper
with the highest circulation in the world, Yomiuri Shimbun, has
10 million readers;65
Barack Obama, with his 40.6 million Twitter
followers, can reach more people with a single tweet than this,
or any other, newspaper.
0
USadvertisingspend(USDbillion)
250
2011 2012 2013* 2014* 2015* 2016* 2017*
OtherPrint RadioDigitalTV
Figure 3.10: USA advertising spend by medium
[Source: eMarketer, 2013]
CAGR
2013-2018
-2%
1%
11%
-2%
4%
3.9 The Internet is Open for Fun
The Internet is rapidly becoming a primary destination for
accessing media, due to the availability of huge volumes of users
and low cost of delivery. This includes written media, in the form
of news websites or blogs, music, or video content, all of which
can be digitized, delivered, and consumed over the Internet.
The many-to-many nature of Internet communication has also
facilitated the rapid development of a multitude of social media
platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, which are making it
easier than ever for users to keep in touch.63
An indicator of the value that media consumers receive from the
content and services available online is provided by the shift in
the proportion of advertising expenditure from traditional forms of
media to online (digital) media. As shown in Figure 3.10 below,
spending on advertising in the USA is forecast to rise particularly
rapidly in digital media, websites, and mobile apps, increasing
from 22% of total spend in 2012 to 31% by 2017.64

Figure 3.11: Top twitter accounts, 20 December 2013
[Source: fanpagelist.com, 2013]
Account Category Twitter followers (million) Facebook fans (million)
Katy Perry Musician 48.6 61.0
Justin Bieber Musician 47.8 60.5
Lady Gaga Musician 40.9 61.2
Barack Obama Politician 40.6 37.8
Taylor Swift Musician 37.7 51.6
YouTube Product 37.4 77.3
Britney Spears Musician 34.8 34.1
Rihanna Musician 33.3 81.5
Instagram Product 29.8 7.1
Justin Timberlake Musician 29.3 29.4
Whilesocialmedia,asmentionedaboveanddiscussedinSection
3.3, can be used by citizens to interact with governments, or by
businesses with customers, its dominant use is for entertainment.
This can be seen by considering the top Twitter accounts, as
shown in Figure 3.11 below. Seven of the top ten accounts (by
number of followers) are for musicians, while a further two are
for entertainment-related services, YouTube, and Instagram.
President Obama is the only politician in the top ten.
Likewise, of the top 20 Facebook fan pages on 20 December
2013, seven are musicians, two actors, and one an athlete. The
remainder are brands, films, TV shows, and games.
The use of social media sites is vast, with 6,282 tweets, 786
Instagram photo uploads, and 1,109 Tumblr posts every second
on one recent day, 20 December 2013.66
Twitter’s use has grown
dramatically since its March 2006 launch, as shown in Figure
3.12, with over 500 million tweets now sent every day by over
230 million active users. The service is truly global, operating in
35 languages, with 77% of accounts originating from outside of
its home market, the USA. 67
Recent trends reveal that emerging regional or local social
media platforms are able to compete with the largest global
ones, namely Facebook (with 1.15 billion monthly active users)
and Twitter (with 240 million monthly active users). Examples
of emerging platforms include WeChat from China (with 236
million monthly active users), and vkontackte from Russia (with
31 million monthly average users).68
Figure 3.12: Tweets per day
[Source: internetlivestats.com, 2013]
Tweetsperday(million)
0
1Jan2006
31Dec2008
1Jan2007
31Dec2009
30Dec2012
1Jan2008
31Dec2010
500
31Dec2011

92
The Internet also hosts other entertainment forms, including
gaming, music, and online video services.
Online gaming
By November 2013, the gaming market in the USA, including
downloadable, social, mobile, and MMO (massively multiplayer
online) games was valued at USD11.8 billion.69
This strong
performance of the gaming market is not exclusive to the USA,
with the Brazilian Internet gaming market expected to be valued
at USD1.4 billion for 2013, up from USD72 million in 2008.70
Angry Birds is an instructive example of a game designed for
mobile use that has seen huge levels of success, with over
1.7billion downloads by November 201371
generating over
USD199 million in revenues during 2012.72
The game was
originally released on theAppleApp Store in December 2009 and
has since built on its addictive nature and low price to generate
a following that has allowed it to develop games for other mobile
devices, video game consoles, and PCs. A full-length feature
film based on the game is in development and expected to be
released in 2016.
Multi-player games are also very popular, using the Internet to
connect players online. Having launched in November 2004 and
peaked at approximately 12 million subscribers in 2010, World
of Warcraft remains the most popular MMO.73
The game is
funded on the basis of a paid subscription, with expansion packs
available to buy. The game has developed a virtual economy,
with items such as virtual gold and services available for sale.
The most expensive World of Warcraft transaction publicized to
date is the September 2007 purchase of an account, based on a
particularly well-equipped character, for USD9900.74
Online music
Accessing music via the Internet is becoming increasingly
popular, with growth in spending on online distributed music
growing at a rate such that, in 2012, the overall value of the
recorded music market grew (by 0.3%) for the first time since
1998.75
This value has arisen from using the Internet for both
streaming and downloading of music.
Internet radio services such as Pandora, available in the USA,
Australia, and New Zealand, provide an interactive service by
recommending music to users based on their tastes, selected
artists, and feedback on earlier suggestions. This service
is available free of charge, funded by advertising, or on a
subscription basis with the advertising removed.As ofApril 2014,
Pandora had 76 million active users, who listened to 1.70 billion
hours in that month.
4,500,000,000
Hours of Spotify streamed in 2013
[Source: Spotify]
143,199Record number of tweets per
second, during an airing of the
classic anime film “Castle in
the Sky” in Japan.
3 August 2013, 23:21:50 JST

The Internet also enables digital downloads of music via stores
such as iTunes, Apple Inc.’s online media library service. This
allows users from approximately 115 countries spread across
all regions76
to download and organize digital video and audio
content on PCs, laptops, and Apple devices. The third-party
content in the library is available to purchase or to rent from the
iTunes store. The service offered is very popular: in February
2013, Apple announced that over 25 billion songs had been
purchased from the iTunes store.77
Online video
The range of video content available on the Internet is vast,
ranging from the seven-second user-generated Vine clips
to short YouTube videos and full-length TV and film content
available through downloading and subscription services such
as iTunes and Netflix. Since its 2012 founding, Vine has been
used for everything from journalism to advertising – showing the
scope of Internet video, even within the confines of such a short
video clip – however, its major use has been for entertainment
purposes. Similarly, YouTube’s top trending videos for 2013
included parody music, such as Ylvis’ ‘The Fox’, with close to
320 million views, and a promotional prank for the film Carrie, the
‘Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise’.78
Uptake of Netflix’s online streaming service is significant in the
USA,wherebytheendof2013ithad33.42millionmembers.79
As
can be seen in Section 1 above, Netflix-related traffic constitutes
a significant portion of aggregate traffic in the USA, particularly
overfixedaccessnetworks.Netflixisreplicatingthissuccessinits
new markets, with services available in 41 countries with almost
11 million international members.80
Netflix is now extending into
developing its own content81
and continuing to sign deals for
content from major studios.82
Summary
The Internet has acted as a new channel for the distribution of
entertainment, as well as enabling new, more interactive and
personalized media. The open Internet has enabled consumers
to generate their own videos, articles, and music, and share them
with a truly global audience.
3.10 Conclusion
The open Internet, by connecting nearly 3 billion users in one
network, has had a significant impact on a number of traditional
services that were traditionally delivered on a ‘one-to-one’ or
‘one-to-many’ basis. In addition, however, it has led to entirely
1,992,738,923
Views of the “Gangnam Style” official
music video, by South Korean
singer PSY.
20 May 2014 13:45 CET
[Source: YouTube]

94
new services and applications by enabling ‘many-to-many’
interactions, as well as interactions between smaller groups for
a host of issues.
With respect to more traditional services, the Internet has had
an almost revolutionary impact by lowering the cost of delivering
and receiving information, eliminating borders so that any service
can reach a broader audience, and allowed for interaction where
services were formerly one-way. This has affected education,
with the rise of MOOCs; allowed international distribution of
entertainment and e-commerce; enabled governments to deliver
online services, while receiving citizen feedback in the form
petitions; and empowered online advocacy.
Atthesametime,newformsofinteractionhavebeenestablished.
Social media enables family, friends, colleagues, and fans to be
connected, and send and receive updates, announcements, and
messages. The sharing economy has arisen to allow consumers
to make their time or possessions available to others for money
or barter. Innovators can now research ideas, borrow money
from others, and sell their goods online. And finally, volunteers
can build on the ethos that led to the Internet itself to collaborate
on new software, create a new online encyclopaedia, and cure
diseases.
These new modes of interaction based on the Internet have
economic and social benefits that are significant, growing,
and almost limitless. In the next section, we discuss some
of the existing challenges to the open Internet and some that
are emerging, resulting in a different Internet experience within
and between countries, which should be addressed to protect
the open Internet and promote its spread so all can realize the
benefits described here.

96
Challenges
to the Open and
Sustainable
Internet
SECTION 04

4.1 Introduction
The benefits of the open Internet flow from the development
and adoption of a set of underlying protocols that are in use
worldwide. These protocols help to create the base of nearly
3 billion users, allowing them to communicate with one
another to generate the benefits described in the previous
section. However, while the Internet is often called the
‘network of networks’, all networks are not created alike.
Creating a global network of networks based on a standard
platform is a foundational success of the Internet. To highlight
both the benefits of the common platform and where Internet
networks and services fall short of delivering a uniform user
experience, we consider first what is basic to the Internet
experience across countries, and then the differences.
First, the IP platform represents a truly unique global
standard. By way of contrast, a maze of standards are
involved in the experience of getting online, illustrating the
difficulty of achieving a global standard. With respect to the
computer, there are different operating systems, different
keyboards,1
and even significant differences in electricity
standards needed to power the computer.2
Likewise, as
a legacy of differentiated telecommunications networks,
there are a variety of access standards for fixed and mobile
broadband access.3
Once the user has the device charged and ready to go,
however, the Internet is an oasis of standardisation.
Regardless of the type of fixed access, the Ethernet
connection used to connect the device to the Internet is the
same everywhere. Likewise, the same Wi-Fi standards can
be used to connect all over the world and, once online, the
same applications, such as email and browsers, will work
without any sort of adaptation or conversion.
1,215,936
Apps available in Google Play
19 May 2014
[Source: AppBrain]

98
That is not to say, however, that there are not significant
differences between countries in terms of Internet access
and usage. The first, highlighted in Figure 4.1, relates to the
penetration of Internet users between countries. The more
users within a country and in neighboring countries, the
more benefits to any other user in being online.
Further,forthoseusersalreadyonline,theoveralluserexperience
can differ significantly by country.Any such differences, however,
do not originate from technical standards, but rather from
government policy and economic reality. In particular, these
differences can arise at two layers of the Internet:
• Infrastructure. Countries can differ by the affordability and
bandwidth of access networks, and by the resilience of
their international connections to other countries, based
on economic factors and policy and regulatory choices.
• Content and applications. Some governments require
network operators to filter content or block applications, using
political or legal justifications. In other cases, content may not
be available or locally relevant for economic reasons.
Figure 4.1: Illustration of global Internet penetration levels in 2012
[Source: ITU, 2013]
80–100% 20–40%60–80% 40–60% 0–20% No data available

In summary, while the open Internet is an unparalleled
positive force for advancement, it is not immune from
economic and political influences that act to limit benefits.
An affordable and reliable Internet is not yet a reality for the
majority of people in the world. At the same time, where
access is available it should not be taken for granted. The
mere fact of being connected does not guarantee one will be
able to innovate or freely share information and ideas; these
abilities require an enabling Internet environment, one that is
based on unrestricted openness.
The best antidote to challenges to openness is a multi-
stakeholder model for technical, policy, and development
solutions as described in Section 2. This must apply both
within and among countries, to ensure that all voices are
heard and the benefits of the open Internet are maximized.
This is particularly relevant as the aftershocks of the recent
revelations regarding global online surveillance are absorbed
and adapted to by governments, companies, and users.
4.2 Infrastructure
Access to the Internet is necessary, but not sufficient, to
fully participate in the global information society. Access
can be provided via mobile or fixed technologies, which are
increasingly of the broadband variety in order to let users take
advantage of faster speeds and ‘always-on’service.The access
networks connect to the Internet via domestic and international
connectivity, increasingly based on fibre-optic networks that
provide both the high speeds and the capacity needed to
accommodate all types of traffic.
Access may not be available to all citizens because of the
high costs of network deployment or low-income levels of
intended users, rendering the services unaffordable. The
resulting digital divide separates users within a country, based
on a region or income levels. However, the digital divide also
separates countries, with more advanced economies forging
ahead with fixed fibre broadband networks and the latest 4G
mobile networks, leaving behind other countries with older fixed
networks and earlier generations of mobile access networks.
Finally, access is contingent on the resilience of all parts of the
network, including in the face of natural disasters, technical
mishaps, or acts of government. The fewer the number and
redundancy of connections, such as the number of submarine
cables connecting a country, the more susceptible the

100
country is to an accidental cable cut. Likewise, as we have
seen more often in recent times, governments’ efforts to shut
down the Internet in the face of protests are more successful
in circumstances where the network is less resilient.
We now examine how the user experience across countries
differs based on differences in access as well as events that
restrict access such as cable cuts or government actions.
Digital divide
A digital divide exists globally, with different levels of access
to Internet services available in different geographies. This
digital divide has arisen in part due to disparities arising in
the cost of devices, software, and infrastructure around the
world, particularly relative to the economic status of countries
and hence the ‘affordability’ of Internet services. With a typical
Internet subscription making up anywhere between 0.1% of
monthly average GDP per capita inAustria to 294.8% in Kiribati,
there is a broad range in the affordability of Internet services.4
As can be seen in Figure 4.2, affordability is distributed on a
regional basis, with the majority of NorthAmerican, developed
Asia-Pacific and European countries having access to
Internet services at a value of less than 2.5% of their monthly
average GDP per capita. However, in South America, Africa,
the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, there are many examples
of countries in which an Internet access subscription makes
up over 10% of the average GDP per capita. These countries
are often those in which both service costs are relatively high
and GDP per capita levels are relatively low.5
The UN Broadband Commission has targeted entry-level
broadband services being made available at less than 5%
of average monthly income by the end of 2015.6
While the
overall majority of countries measured for 2012 have reached
this target, the majority of developing countries have not yet.7
The cost, or more precisely affordability, of Internet access
has a significant impact on the uptake of services. This
relationship between affordability and Internet usage is
illustrated in more detail in Figure 4.3 below.

Figure 4.2: Proportion of average GDP per capita required for broadband access in 2012
[Source: ITU; World Bank, 2013]
Figure 4.3: Relationship between proportion of GDP per capita for broadband access and Internet usage
proportion in a country
[Source: ITU; World Bank, 2013]
GINIIndex
Internet usage (%)
300%
0 100908070605040302010
0%
<2.5% 10–25%2.5–5% 5–10% >25% No data available

102
Internet adoption is not only influenced by the average
income in a country, but also by the distribution of income
within the country. By way of illustration, if a billionaire walks
into a room, he/she will raise the average income in the room
significantly, but that would not increase the buying power
of anyone else in the room, for broadband or any other
purchase. Thus, a high average income does not necessarily
translate into higher affordability, if it results from significant
inequality, as illustrated in Figure 4.4.
Figure 4.4: Analysis of the use of GDP per capita in computing affordability
[Source: Analysys Mason,ITU, World Bank, 2013]
Romania
Angola
7%
Monthlyfixedbroadbandsubscriptionsas%ofGDPper
capitainincomebracket
20%
40%
Fourth 20% Third 20% Second 20% Lowest 20%
0%
Highest 20%
Average income levels mask the
difference in income inequality
between the two countries.
Angola has greater income
inequality than Romania, as
seen in the figure, putting
broadband out of reach for most.
However, mobile broadband
takeup in Romania is
significantly higher
Both Angola and
Romania have
mobile broadband
services available at
approximately 7% of
GDP per capita
7% 37%
4%

In addition to affordability, countries and regions are divided
by significant infrastructure differences, even where access
is readily available. One measure is download speed for
broadband Internet access,8
as shown in Figure 4.5. The
higher the bandwidth, the more users can access advanced
services, particularly ones that rely heavily on video. The
median download throughput achieved is governed by the
quality of the country’s infrastructure and hence the level of
investment in telecommunications. It is, therefore, generally
the wealthier countries in which the higher broadband speeds
are available.
Of interest is that some of the larger countries underperform
with regard to throughput when compared to how they score
for affordability. For instance, compare Belgium andAustralia,
both countries in which less than 2.5% of average GDP per
capita was required for broadband access in 2012. However,
while 97.1% of Belgium homes had access to broadband
speeds of over 30Mbit/s in 2012,9
only 14% of Australian
Internet subscribers received services with speeds of over
24Mbit/s in June 2013.10
One significant difference between
the countries is that Belgium has a population density of
364.84 per square mile, while it is just 2.91 in Australia,11
significantly increasing the cost of rolling out an advanced
broadband network in Australia. In order to overcome these
challenges and increase download speeds across the
country, the Australian government is proposing to invest
AUD29.5 billion (USD26.1 billion) in the building of a fibre
national broadband network.12
The digital divide has arisen due to a number of reasons,
including differences in wealth between countries, differences
in population density and other infrastructural challenges,
and possibly differences in telecommunications policies
and regulations. Efforts to remove barriers to connectivity
and to promote infrastructure will help to both lower the cost
of access and increase the quality of services offered.13
For instance, efforts to promote the deployment of IXPs,
as described in Section 2, help to lower the cost of traffic
delivery while also reducing latency.14
The increasing affordability of the Internet across all nations
will result in a narrowing of the digital divide between nations
in terms of access, although regional disparities will remain.
As less economically developed countries gain access to
the open Internet on a wider level, users within their borders
will obtain greater access to the benefits of the Internet,
promoting innovation and the free sharing of information and
ideas.

104
Box 9: Survey Results
Before the Internet reaches its full potential in your country improvements need to be made in the local physical
infrastructure
0%
100%
(USA)
Our survey results indicate
that respondents in Africa
and Latin America, in
particular, are most likely
to ‘strongly agree’with
the notion that physical
infrastructure needs to
improve to allow the
Internet to reach full
potential, while that number
is the lowest in the USA
Figure 4.5: Median download speed for fixed Internet access across 2013 and 2014
[Source: NetIndex, 2014]
>30 Mbit/s 5–10Mbit/s20–30Mbit/s 10–20Mbit/s <5Mbit/s No data available

Resilience and disruptions
Users in some countries may not just suffer from high costs
or slow access speeds, but also from disruptions that may
make the Internet inaccessible for a period of time. In addition
to preventing user access to content and applications,
this may inhibit investments in online services that require
reliable Internet access. In this section, we examine general
resilience of the network, as well as incidences of specific
disruptions in 2013.
Internet resilience denotes the risk of large-scale Internet
disruptions, with those countries with low resilience having
a high risk of disruptions. Resilience is impacted by the
diversity of interconnections between national infrastructure
and international data carriers. Where there are more
international connections in place, it takes a greater amount
of damage, infrastructure attacks, or government intervention
to shut down access to the global Internet in the country.
As an example of the risk of low resilience, in 2011 an elderly
woman in Georgia inadvertently severed the main terrestrial
fibre cable link to Armenia, cutting off the Internet in the latter
country for up to five hours.15
Undersea, a recent cut in the
SEA-ME-WE 4 cable near Alexandria, Egypt, resulted in
a significant slowdown of the Internet in Africa, the Middle
East, and parts of Asia. In this case, there are multiple cables
providing resilience, but several were being maintained, and
thus could not provide diversity when needed.16
The history of government-led shutdowns extends back
to 2007, when such a shutdown was used in response to
Burma’s Saffron Revolution.17
In countries in which Internet
access is controlled by a government-owned monopoly, such
as in Syria, it is relatively simple for the government to switch
off access to the Internet unilaterally – there is no diversity
and the government has control over the provider.18
On the
other hand, in Egypt, where there are a number of ISPs,
the government was still able to shut down the Internet, in
part based on the control of Egypt Telecom, the majority
government-owned incumbent, over the fibre-optic cables.19
Renesys, which gathers Internet intelligence to help
organizations improve the reliability of their Internet usage,
has scored the resilience of countries based on the number
of direct connections between domestic and international
Internet providers visible on a global Internet routing table.20
Its research shows that the majority of Internet disruptions
reported in 2013 occurred in countries considered to be at
severe or significant risk (see Figures 4.6 and 4.7).

106
CUBA
Full
Unknown cause
1 hour
1/12
VENEZUELA
Partial
Government caused
20 minutes
15/4
GAMBIA
Full
Accident
Hours
11/12
GUYANA AND
SURINAME
Partial
Accident
7 hours
6/11
8/1
6/9
9/12
LIBYA
Full
Accident
Minutes
Partial
Accident
Hours
CENTRAL
AFRICAN
REPUBLIC
Full
Accident
16 minutes
Figure 4.6: Illustration of the correlation between Internet resiliance and Internet disruption in 2013
[Source: Renesys, Analysys Mason, 2014]

THAILAND
Full
Government caused
4 hours
2/12
MYANMAR
Full
Unknown cause
1 hour
5/8
EGYPT, SAUDI ARABIA,
UAE, PAKISTAN, INDIA
Partial
Cable break
Minutes
1/4
SOUTH KOREA
Partial
Unknown cause
2 hours
20/3
SUDAN
Full
Unknown cause
24 hours
26/9
LEBANON
Partial
Unknown cause
40 minutes
15/4
IRAQ
Partial
Government caused
4 hours
11/10
Level of disruption
Cause of disruption
Duration of disruption
D/M Day/Month
Resistant
Severe Risk
No data available
Low Risk
Significant Risk

108
The consequences of Internet disruptions include the loss
of or reduction in the ability of the population to engage in
economic activity, reach emergency services, and connect
with loved ones. The only short-run resolution to be found
is for the disruption to be lifted, either by repairing the
damaged routes, lifting the regulatory block, or finding an
alternative route by which to transmit the data. In the longer
run, resilience must be built into the system with a greater
diversity of international connections.
Figure 4.7: Case studies of disruptions to Internet connectivity
[Source: Analysys Mason, Huffington Post, 2013]
SYRIA NORTH KOREA
• Full blackout
• 4 hours
6/1 • Full blackout
• half day
15/3
• Partial blackout
• minutes
30/3
• Full blackout
• minutes
20/3
• Full blackout
• 11 minutes
2/10
• Full blackout
• minutes
29/3
• Full blackout
• 45 minutes
12/12
• Full blackout
• 32 minutes
20/1
• Full blackout
• 1 day
7/5
• Full blackout
• 6 hours
15/5
• Full blackout
• 6 minutes
18/7
• Blackout in Aleppo
• 17.5 hours
11/10
• Blackout everywhere
except Aleppo
• 3.5 hours
9/12
7 Internet blackouts have been reported in
Syria during 2013, with durations lasting
between 6 minutes and one day
North Korea has also experencied a number of
Internet outages in 2013, many in March, with
the majority of these lasting less than an hour
The reason for these disruptions is unknown;
however, it is likely they are linked to the civil war
taking place in the country
Some commentators have suggested they could
be the results of purposeful
government action
There has been no confirmed cause of these
disruptions. The North Korean government has accused
the USA and its allies of carrying out cyber attacks
However, it seems it seems more likely that these
outages are the result of technical issues from within
the country, such as power failure, equipment failure
or a misconfiguration by a network admin
2013
2013
D/M Day/Month

Deliberate government-initiated shutdowns are a breach
of the UN’s guiding principles on freedoms of opinion and
expression. Article 19 from the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights states with regard to the Internet
that “States parties should take all necessary steps to
foster the independence of these new media and to ensure
access of individuals thereto”21
, and that:
It is also inconsistent with paragraph 322
to prohibit a site
or an information dissemination system from publishing
material solely on the basis that it may be critical of the
government or the political social system espoused by
the government.23
Any such block of the Internet constitutes an intrusion into
the basic rights of its citizens to communication and could
in the long run have a detrimental impact on the economy
and society of a country.
The Internet was designed to route around damage to the
network, and this extends to efforts to block use of the
Internet itself. Users of the Internet have been responsible
for developing innovative methods to work around
government blocks, particularly when these have occurred
in times of civil unrest. The 26 September 2013 Internet
shutdown in Sudan occurred on “Martyrs’ Friday”, a day
promoted on social media as a time to protest in the country
in remembrance of those who had died in previous protests.
Activists responded to this shutdown by launching the
Abena Crowd map,24
which tracked demonstrations using
SMS-based reports. While the Internet shutdown prevented
those in Sudan from seeing the map, it gave those in the
rest of the world an insight into the activities in the country
beyond those reported by the government-censored media.
Additionally, Twitter’s Speak2Tweet service, launched
during the 2011 Egyptian Internet shutdowns (as discussed
in Section 3), was restarted as a way to sidestep the Syrian
Internet shutdowns.25
Internet resilience can be improved through investment in
infrastructure or removal of regulatory barriers prohibiting or
discouraging new international connections. Such increases
in Internet diversity may occur without intervention, as
a result of economic growth making it profitable for new
Internet providers to enter the market. Alternatively, local
regulators can promote investment and new entrants,
helping to overcome the monopoly advantage experienced
by some strong incumbents in less developed markets.

110
An example of an international venture to increase
connectivity and, therefore, resilience is the West Africa
Cable System (WACS), a 14,000km submarine cable
owned by a consortium of 12 operators and regulators.
The cable was completed in late 2011 at a cost of USD600
million, with 14 landing sites across Western Africa and
Europe. Five of these landing sites – those in Angola,
Namibia, the DRC, the Republic of Congo, and Togo – were
the first submarine cable landing sites in each country.26
Similarly, increases in the diversity of providers can result in
improvements in resilience. For instance, the WACS cable
was developed under an open access policy, allowing ISPs
to access international capacity without having made the
upfront investment.27
Likewise, increasing the number of
broadband providers in the country also increases diversity
and resilience. In Costa Rica, for example, the June 2009
General Telecommunications law ended the monopoly
of Kolbi, the telecoms division of the government-owned
utility company Grupo ICE. Today there appear to be at
least six broadband providers in the country.28
In general, according to the latest ITU annual regulatory
survey for 2012, 93% of countries responding had
competition in Internet services, and 85% had competition
at international gateways.29
This represents a significant
increase over recent years, but nevertheless a number
of countries still lack competitive diversity in these key
services. Further, having allowed competition, not all
competitors may enter with their own facilities, and thus
competitive diversity may not result in route diversity.
Although Internet resilience is high in the majority of
countries, many countries still experience Internet
disruptions for a variety of reasons. Greater levels
of infrastructure investment and action to circumvent
government-initiated shutdowns may help to reduce the
frequency of all forms of disruption in the future. This
ensures a more stable Internet experience for users, and
also helps to promote investment and availability of content
and applications.
4.3 Content and applications
Internet infrastructure is a means to an end – accessing
the vast amount of content and applications that are
available on the Internet. In addition to the differences in

access conditions detailed in the previous section, content
and application availability can differ significantly between
countries based on government actions to restrict access
or business decisions on availability.
Much more common than cutting off the entire Internet – an
approach typically used in the short-term during a period
of unrest – governments may choose to restrict access
to specific content or applications over the long-term,
for political or social reasons. Similarly, businesses may
choose not to make content available for particular uses or
in all countries based on copyright licensing decisions. At
the same time, even content not subject to such restrictions
may be realistically unavailable in countries with little or no
content hosted locally – the international links needed to
access content may add latency and cost that effectively
restricts access.
Filtering and blocking
Governments can enact laws and measures that enable
them to restrict access to content that they deem to be
undesirable, which they extend to online content. The
majority of such measures are associated with blocking
content relating to pornography, gambling, and hate
speech, in line with religious or social norms in the country.
However, a number of countries are more interventionist,
blocking social and news content, often in a politically
motivated manner.
Freedom House, an NGO focused on promoting political
freedom, published a report in October 2013 entitled
Freedom on the Net.30
This report analyses Internet freedom
across 60 countries, focusing on developments between
May 2012 and April 2013. Each of these countries was
scored out of 35 for ‘Limits on Content’, with scores ranging
from lows of 1 in Iceland and the USA to 32 in Iran.31
As
can be seen in Figure 4.8, countries with particularly high
levels of limitation on content imposed by their government
(scores greater than 20) appear to be concentrated in the
Asia–Pacific region and in Africa, although we note that no
data was available for a large number of countries.
In some countries, the justifications for filtering are existing
laws, such as those prohibiting Nazi imagery or child abuse
images, which are extended to the Internet. In other cases,
laws are passed specifically to block online activities, such
as Italy’s 2006 Legge Finanziaria32
and France’s 2011
LOPPSI 2,33
blocking websites dedicated to gambling and
illegal file-sharing alongside pornography.

112
Figure 4.8: Freedom House limits-on-content score
[Source: Freedom house, 2013]
1–5 16–206–10 11–15 21–25 26–30 31–35 No data available
The enforcement of these laws can be achieved with
assistance from different stakeholders. For instance, in the
United Kingdom the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF),34
a
registered charity, was setup in conjunction with government
agencies to help block sites considered illegal on the basis
of:
• child sexual abuse images hosted anywhere in the
world
• criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK
• non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK

0%
100%
(USA)
0%
100%
(USA)
C. Increased government control of the Internet would limit my freedom of
expression
The Global Internet User
Survey asked subscribers
a number of questions
about the impact of
government control over
the Internet on freedom
of expression and
access to content, and
the resulting impact on
Internet use and growth.
The majority of users in
all regions strongly or
somewhat agreed about
the impacts of increased
control, particularly so
in Latin America and
Africa, where the plurality
strongly agreed with
those sentiments.
A. Increased government control of the Internet would make me use the
Internet less
0%
100%
(USA)
B. Increased government control of the Internet would inhibit the growth
of the Internet

114
In the case of the IWF, the public assists by reporting individual
webpages that are compiled into a blacklist of sites. The
blacklist is voluntarily applied by the ISPs responsible for the
Internet service of 95% of the UK’s customers.35
In addition,
the IWF continues to be supported by government and works
with police to block illegal content.
However, such services are not infallible and can be
responsible for the censoring of content not found illegal by
a court of law. In 2008, the IWF blacklisted Wikipedia content
relating to a 1976 album by the rock band Scorpion, due to the
cover art.36
This blacklist of a single Wikipedia article resulted
in many UK Internet users being unable to edit any Wikipedia
pages. However, the block was lifted after four days due to
“the contextual issues involved in this specific case” including
the length of time the album cover in question had already
been widely available.37
Likewise, the Australian Communications and Media Authority
(ACMA) is responsible for censoring websites in Australia,
and it maintains a blacklist of sites with illegal content. This
list was leaked online in March 2009 and approximately
half of the 2,395 sites included were not illegal, including a
Queensland dentist, the site of a school canteen consultancy,
and a web hosting and design company based in New South
Wales.38
This cast doubt on the ability of governments to filter
the Internet without inadvertently blocking legitimate websites.
A number of countries go further, extending online prohibitions
to political content. These countries score as among the most
restrictive in the Freedom on the Net study. For instance,
in Bahrain, where the limits-on-content score is 26, the IAA
(Information Affairs Authority) is tasked with blocking or
shutting down any websites including material “instigating
hatred of the political regime”,39
giving the IAA free reign to
block any site criticising the government or royal family. Of
the 1,267 inaccessible-website reports in Bahrain made
to monitoring site Herdict40
since January 2009, 39% were
political sites such as the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights,41
and a further 23% were social, such as sites for gay dating
and social networking services.
China, with an even higher limits-on-content score of 28,
applies significant levels of censorship, particularly of
international websites,42
despite assurances from government
officials that “the internet is open”.43
Many of these site blocks
first came into force in 2009, prior to the 20th anniversary of
Tiananmen Square.44
As shown in Figure 4.9, blocking based
on specific content, such as was done in Pakistan, can extend
sometimes to more broad blocks, sometimes with unintended
consequences for the rest of the Internet.

The filtering and blocking of Internet content can be
circumvented by savvy and, in some cases, daring users;
but its reversal can only be brought about by a change in
government policies. While it appears that many countries are
bringing in new laws to increase censorship, there is some
evidence of moves to reduce censorship. For instance, the
Burmese government began lifting blocks on foreign websites,
such as the BBC and YouTube, in September 2011.45
Then, in
August 2012, The Press Scrutiny and Registration Department
(PSRD) – the Burmese censorship body – announced that
pre-publication censorship of both online and offline media,
a policy in place for 50 years, would be abolished. Similar
policies, lifting blocking orders and opening up access to
social media tools, have recently been enacted in Morocco
and Tunisia.
Figure 4.9: Censorship in Pakistan
While many governments are using their blocking and filtering
powers over network operators for the intended purpose of
protecting their citizens, the trend towards more stringent
controls does appear to be rising, with new laws being adopted
more rapidly than old restrictions are removed. This is leading
to a less open Internet, with governments seeking political gain,
while users cannot experience the full benefits of the Internet.
PAKISTANPERIODS IN WHICH YOUTUBE
WAS BLOCKED BY PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN HAS A HISTORY OF CENSORSHIP WITH REGARDS TO YOUTUBE
2/08
The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) first blocked YouTube in
February 2008 for containing “blasphemous content, videos and documents”.
The ban was lifted after the site removed “highly profane and sacrilegious
footage”.
An error made by Pakistan Telecom in carrying out the government’s ban
resulted in YouTube becoming widely inaccessible for over an hour on
24 February.
5/10
YouTube was again blocked in Pakistan in May 2010, due to the use of the
site for sharing images of the Prophet Muhammad. The ban was lifted after 8
days; however, links to individual videos with objectionable material remained
blocked, as did Facebook, which was seen as the source of the caricatures.
9/12
On 17 September 2012 the PTA blocked YouTube for hosting a trailer of “The
Innocence of Muslims”. Due to YouTube’s non-compliance with the Pakistani
government’s request to have this video removed, the site has remained
blocked. There is an ongoing court case from the human rights group Bytes
for All challenging the ban
In December 2013 it was announced that an agreement had been reached
between the PTA and YouTube for a local version of the site to be made
available, YouTube.com.pk
This, if the Pakistani governement agrees with Google’s as yet undisclosed
conditions, will be the 57th
localised version of YouTube to be released
12/13
2014
2008 5 days
8 days
16 months
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013

116
Box 11: Survey responses
Before the Internet reaches its full potential in your country people need to be able to access the Internet
without data and content restriction
Copyright licensing
Content available in one country may not be available in
other countries owing to copyright licensing. In some cases,
this could mean that a commercial video service, such as
Netflix, is territorially restricted. In other cases, this means
that a user in one country may receive a message such as
the one reproduced in Figure 4.10 when trying to view a video
clip in a country other than the one in which the clip was
made available. This can have a significant impact on users’
experience, as they cannot always enjoy the full extent of the
content otherwise available.
The majority in all regions
surveyed agreed strongly
or somewhat that data and
content restrictions would
limit the ability of the Internet
to reach its full potential.
Interestingly, the two countries
with the least strong support
for this proposition were the
USA and China, which are at
opposite ends of the spectrum
for actual limits on content,
according to Freedom House.
Figure 4.10: Licensing limits
[Source: Internet Society]
Sorry, but this
video cannot be
reproduced in
your location
0%
100%
(USA)

Governments grant copyrights, bestowing intellectual property
rights that allow the creator of a given piece of content,
whether physical or digital, the right to the use and distribution
of their work. As a result, copyright holders are able to control
access to their works and are responsible for agreements
with individual distribution platforms. Such deals are often
negotiated on a territorial basis, with the rights not extending
beyond international borders.
For instance, BBC iPlayer is a free online catch-up service46
available within the UK that enables users to access much of
the radio and television-programming broadcast on the BBC
throughout the previous week. While some of the BBC content
is made available outside of the UK via the BBC iPlayer Global
App,47
rights agreements mean that the majority of television
programmes are only available to users in the UK.
Even within the UK, the cost of acquiring the rights for online
distribution of the content means that certain programmes will
not be available via iPlayer. Films, international programming,
and sporting events in particular are likely to fall into this
category due to the cost and complexity involved in obtaining
the rights.48
For example, when considering the English
Premier League, TV and Internet broadcast rights are held by
different groups (BSkyB and BT hold TV rights, while News
International holds Internet broadcast rights), therefore the
BBC would have to acquire the rights to show the football
twice if it wishes to also stream the matches online.
Similarly, programming on other catch-up TV services, as well
as subscription streaming services, have different content
available in different regions. Netflix’s director of corporate
communications explains the practice this way:
[O]rganizations that own the rights to those shows license
the rights by geography. So this means that we have to
acquire rights on a territory-by-territory basis. And that’s
why Netflix is not available everywhere, and where it is
available there are differences between Netflix in Brazil
and in Sweden or the US.49
This can have a significant impact on the content available.
For example, as of 13 January 2014, Netflix subscribers in
the USA had access to 10,463 films or shows, while those in
Canada only had access to 3,932.50
Similarly, Google Play – offering content for Android devices
– has six content categories: paid apps, books, magazines,
movies, TV shows, and music; and content availability varies
by country. As of January 2014, only customers in the UK

118
and the USA had access to all of the Google Play content
categories.51
As shown in Figure 4.11, content availability
appears to be particularly high in North America, Western
Europe, and Australia, high-income countries in which
acquiring the rights is more likely to be profitable.
Paid apps are the most prevalent content category available,
as shown in Figure 4.12. Unlike the other content categories
whose rights Google has to acquire (such as those developed
for more traditional platforms such as theatres or television),
apps are developed specifically for compatible devices, and
thus made available wherever the store is available (unless
the app involves licensed content). Thus, we expect that paid
apps are available in every country in which the Google Play
service is available, for a total of 143 countries. On the other
hand, those other content categories, such as books and
movies, entail existing licensing arrangements and thus may
not be available in every country.
Figure 4.11: Availability of Google content and apps
[Source: Google, 2014]
6 content
types
3 content
types
5 content
types
4 content
types
2 content
types
1 content
type
No Google
content

TV MUSIC
For instance, the popular game app Angry Birds52
was
developed exclusively for the mobile app platform and is,
therefore,madeavailableineverypossiblecountrytomaximize
the size of the addressable market. However, the forthcoming
Angry Birds movie is likely to have a more complex release
window, owing to traditional movie distribution patterns. The
distribution contracts for the movie will be driven by the need
to keep intact the entire release window across all platforms,
including cinema, DVD, digital downloads, and TV broadcast,
and as a result it may not be available on Google Play in many
countries where the app is available.
Figure 4.12: Proportion of countries with access to each category of Google content
[Source: Analysys Mason, Google, 2014]
2% 11%
MAGAZINES MOVIES
3% 14%
APP BOOKS
66% 21%

120116
We note also that 33% of countries have no access to any
Google Play content, including paid apps. These countries
are clustered in developing economies, with 25 in sub-
Saharan Africa, 17 in emerging Asia–Pacific and 11 in Central
and Latin America. The lack of access to any Google Play
content in these countries serves to restrict users from using
an increasingly popular service and also inhibits them from
developing and selling apps in their own country, where they
would have an advantage in targeting apps for their local
environment.
Due to the profit-making incentives governing the behaviour of
bothcontentrightsownersandmediabroadcastorganizations,
it is unlikely under the current international licensing regimes
that content will become universally available. However, the
legality of licensing on a country-by-country basis has been
called into question in some cases. In 2011, in the UK, pub
landlady Karen Murphy appealed in the European Court of
Justice (ECJ) a fine for using a Greek TV decoder to show
live Barclays Premier League football matches at a cost lower
than that of the local service. On 4 October 2011, the ECJ
ruled that:
a system of exclusive licences is also contrary to European
Union competition law if the licence agreements prohibit
the supply of decoder cards to television viewers who
wish to watch the broadcasts outside the Member State
for which the licence is granted.53
While this case focused on TV and not Internet rights, court
rulings such as this may encourage rights holders to pursue an
alternative approach to the licensing of programming, perhaps
taking a pan-European tender approach in this example.
Regardless of the decisions made by the rights holders, any
move towards the ending of exclusive territorial distribution is
likely to increase content availability and benefit consumers.
A revision of the licensing regime and copyright laws at
regional or international levels could bring about a move
towards the liberalisation of content, such that Internet users
in the developing world have access to the same resources
as those in more developed nations, helping to equalize
user experience around the globe. However, even if content
is available in a country, there may be other challenges to
access the content, based on where it is hosted.

Global Internet Report 2014 | 121Global Internet Report 2014 | 117
Figure 4.13: Proportion of Internet users, websites and native language speakers for the top-ten Internet
user languages
[Source: internetworldstats.com, W3Techs, 2014]
English
German
Chinese
Arabic
Spanish
French
Japanese
Russian
Portuguese
Korean Other
0% 100%
Native language of
global population
Primary language of
Internet users
Primary language of
website content
Content divide
The availability of content – whether licensed or not - does not
always translate into usage, for several reasons. First, content
must be locally relevant, based on language and context.
Second, the location where the content is stored can have a
significant impact on the cost and latency of the access, which
in turn affects the usage of the content.
Content must be locally relevant for maximal usage, and a key
factor in determining the usefulness of content is the language
in which that content is provided. Figure 4.13 considers the
top ten languages that are spoken as the primary language
of Internet users. For each language, the chart compares the
proportion of Internet users for whom the language is their
primary language with the proportion of Internet websites
for which content is primarily provided in that language. By
way of comparison, the proportion of the world’s population
for whom the language considered is their native language is
also provided.
The chart shows that English-speaking Internet users are
over-represented compared to global population share, but
they also enjoy an abundance of English-language websites
compared, for instance, with Chinese-speaking Internet
English-speaking, more than twice as many websites are
Chinese speakers make up 25% of Internet users, but only
3.3% of websites offer content primarily in Chinese.54
users. While 27% of Internet users are classified as (primarily)
classified as offering content (primarily) in English. In contrast,

122
Other language challenges relate to differences in alphabet
script. Historically, Internet naming has been based on the
English alphabet, as encoded in ASCII.55
This has significant
limitations on the use of domain names for speakers of
languages that use other characters, including not just Chinese
and Russian, but even languages using the Latin alphabet,
which comprises the English alphabet along with diacritical
markings, such as the accents used over vowels in French. In
2009, ICANN approved the use of Internationalized Domain
Names (IDNs), using non-ASCII characters, which are now
in use, and other efforts at the IETF are enabling non-ASCII
characters to be used in email headers.56
While language is critical, the underlying content must still be
relevant to the context of the users. By way of example, Extra
News is a community newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, which
is bilingual in English and Spanish for both print and online
versions.57
While this is very useful for Spanish-speaking
residents of Chicago, it is of no benefit to Spanish speakers
in Latin America who would instead benefit from a local
newspaper in their own community.
A recent study conducted by the Internet Society, the OECD,
and UNESCO titled The Relationship between Local Content,
Internet Development and Access Prices highlights the
benefits of promoting local content that can foster local talent,
protect local culture and languages, and create more local
traffic.58
The study also highlighted policies to help promote
local content creation.
However, the availability of local content may still be
insufficient to maximize usage by end users, if the content
is not easily accessible. According to a recent presentation,
the five largest Kenyan websites are all hosted in Europe,
along with most international content delivered to Kenya.59
Accessing this content from abroad over international links
can add significant latency to communications for Kenyan end
users; given the cost of those international links, they may be
under-provisioned, and the resulting congestion may render
the content all but unusable.
As shown in a recent Internet Society study, when Google
installed a cache in Nairobi, Kenya, for static content such
as YouTube videos, allowing for local access to the videos
via the Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP), there was a
significant increase in Google usage.60
This increased usage
came at relatively low cost to the Kenyan ISPs, which did not
have to use expensive international submarine cable capacity
to access the traffic. In addition, it increased their revenues,
based on the usage charge per MB for the additional traffic.

There can, therefore, be significant differences between
countries in the latency of access to content. RIPE NCC has
a program called Atlas, which distributes probes to users
and organizations around the world, which are attached to
Internet connections and can be programmed to test latency
across these geographies.61
The Atlas probes were recently
configured to test the round trip time needed to access
YouTube and Facebook.62
Without specifying the location
of the server to access, this test measured the end-user
experience in accessing www.youtube.com or www.facebook.
com.
As shown in Figure 4.14, there are big variations in the
median result across countries, with European, developed
Asia-Pacific, and North American countries generally having
lower latency. These differences in latency can generally be
attributed to the quality of the network and how close the
content is to the country, either the original in a data centre or
a duplicate in a cache.63
Figure 4.14: Median round trip time for YouTube ping
[Source: RIPE Atlas, 2014]
<10 milliseconds 50–100 milliseconds10–25 milliseconds 25–50 milliseconds >100 milliseconds No data available

124
The same test was carried out for Facebook with albeit
universally higher latency. As shown in Figure 4.15 it is once
again generally the European, developed Asia-Pacific, and
North American countries that have lower latency.
The contrast between Facebook and YouTube latencies
results in part from differences in the type of content, and in
part from different strategies for data delivery. First, YouTube
videos are static and, therefore, lend themselves well to
caching, while Facebook content is largely dynamic, changing
as users continuously update their information. Second, as
described above, in order to improve the delivery of videos,
Google has introduced caches around the world as part of
their Google Global Cache (GGC) program, which extends
Google’s delivery platform into more than 100 countries.64
By contrast, Facebook opened its first data centre outside
the United States in mid-2013, and there is no evidence of a
widespread international content delivery strategy.65
Figure 4.15: Median round trip time for Facebook ping
[Source: RIPE Atlas, 2014]
<10 milliseconds 50–100 milliseconds10–25 milliseconds 25–50 milliseconds >100 milliseconds No data available

In summary, to remove disparities in access to locally relevant
content, and thereby promote Internet usage, it is important to
remove language disparities and foster both the creation and
hosting of content that is relevant to local users.
4.4 Internet fragmentation
The examples above represent existing differences in the
user experience between countries. While the causes,
severity, and timing of these examples are all different, they all
share the characteristic of being basically online extensions
of offline issues. Countries that ban Nazi imagery offline,
ban Nazi imagery online; emerging markets are developing
infrastructure in general, including for Internet access; and
regimes seeking to repress political protests may extend their
efforts to shut down the Internet.
However, a new threat to the Internet experience is emerging
in the wake of revelations of pervasive Internet surveillance
by state actors, which has altered users’ perception of their
Internet usage. Perhaps even worse, government responses
to this threat could begin to fundamentally fracture the Internet.
On 5 June 2013, the first article was printed based on the
material obtained by Edward Snowden, a contractor for the US
National Security Agency (NSA). New material has continued
to emerge, setting off a series of shocks and aftershocks that
continue through this writing.
Trust is the foundation of our online lives, underpinning the
benefits outlined in Section 3. Many online activities – ranging
from e-commerce to the delivery of government services –
depend in some part on users inputting sensitive personal
data, such as financial or health records, and relying on it to
remain confidential. In other cases, users rely on anonymity to
participate in protests or ‘whistle blow’.
Therevelationsdetailedanapproachtoglobalonlinesurveillance
as broad as the Internet itself, and thus what has been revealed
has cracked the foundation of trust in the Internet. Users are
learning that some providers have enabled access to their data,
the providers themselves are learning that their unencrypted
transmissions have been tapped, while encryption itself may
have been subverted in some cases. Further, governments
partnered together in their surveillance efforts, while at the same
time they may have spied on each other.

126
In addition, what is known may only be the tip of the iceberg –
in December 2013 an editor of British newspaper the Guardian
claimed that only 1% of documents had been released,66
while representatives of the US government are seemingly
unsure of what is in the remaining 99% of the documents.67
One of the journalists who has had access to the Snowden
documents since the beginning, Glenn Greenwald, shed
some light recently on what is to come, explaining that he
views the revelations like a “fireworks show: You want to save
your best for last”, with the final big stories coming in June
and July 2014.68
The uncertainty about what remains stokes
doubts about our online privacy and security.
As a result, organisations seek to switch Internet providers,
while the providers are changing the way that they supply
services. Evidence is already emerging that companies and
governments are avoiding companies from the USA and/or
solutions that involve storing data in the USA. Estimates for
costs to the USA cloud computing and web hosting industry
range up to USD180 billion.69
In response to these losses, new solutions are emerging
to increase users’ control of the storage of their information.
Microsoft for example declared recently that it would enable its
users to choose the country in which their personal information
is stored. As explained by Brad Smith, general counsel of
Microsoft: “People should have the ability to know whether their
data are being subjected to the laws and access of governments
in some other country and should have the ability to make an
informed choice of where their data resides.”70
More fundamentally, a number of governments are debating
requirements for national service delivery, which would act to
localize Internet services within their borders. For instance,
Brazil considered amendments to the Marco Civil da Internet
bill, which would have required large content providers
such as Google or Facebook to store user data on Brazilian
territory.71
While this clause was omitted from the legislation
that was finally adopted, other countries have examined
similar initiatives.72
Requirements of local data processing could have substantial
implications for Internet companies, with increased costs
as a result. As an example, a recent study by the Brazilian
telecommunications group Brasscom found that the operating
costs of a data centre in Brazil can be up to 100 per cent higher
than in the USA, mainly due to electricity costs and taxation.73
While Brazil chose not to require local data processing, the
same cost dynamic may be true in other countries, which
could act as a barrier to entry for companies.

The results of any data localisation requirements would be
uniqueinseveralways.Theverygoalofthesepolicieswouldbe
to separate one country’s Internet experience from another’s,
with potentially irreversible consequences. Requirements to
store or process data locally could lead to some companies
declining to offer service in particular countries owing to the
increased cost. At the same time, local companies, which
could benefit from those policies, might find it difficult to
expand to other countries with similar policies, a result akin to
the ‘beggar thy neighbour’ trade wars of the 1930s.74
4.5 Conclusion
InspiteofthesingularsuccessoftheInternetincreatingaglobal
platform, connecting nearly 3 billion users together to reap the
many benefits of the open Internet, there are still significant
differences in user experience between countries. Some of
these differences arise from economics – richer countries can
afford to invest more for infrastructure than poorer countries.
Further, even where private sector investment has resulted in
advanced mobile networks in a number of developing countries,
effectively leapfrogging legacy fixed networks, penetration is
lower because of lower income levels.
At the same time, business decisions can have an impact
on the availability and provision of capacity for Internet
access, affecting the download speeds and quality of service
experienced by the users. Further, similar decisions can
influence the amount of content available in a country along
with the location where the content is hosted, which in turn
can have consequences regarding what users can access
online and the quality of the access.
Of course, businesses are affected by government policy
and regulations, which can create an enabling environment
for Internet access and services. For instance, the diversity
of international interconnections can have an impact on the
resilience of the network, and diversity can be increased
by government decisions regarding the ownership of the
incumbent and the entry of competition. Further, several
governments have imposed restrictions on content availability
within their borders and also have taken steps in recent years
to shut down the Internet at the borders for varying lengths
of time. These decisions can have repercussions for the
usage of the Internet within a country and for the willingness
of companies to invest in providing access and content.
In the next section, we turn to recommendations for addressing
the challenges raised here.

128
Recommendations
SECTION 05

5.1 The Internet is for Everyone
Although the Internet is held together by a global set of
standards, we have shown here that there are divisions in
the user experience between countries. Further, in spite of
the striking, once unimaginable, growth in Internet adoption
and usage, the majority of the world population is still not
online. Addressing the challenges in the previous section
will not just improve the user experience of those currently
online, but will also contribute to the Internet Society’s
overarching vision, that the Internet is for Everyone.
As we see in Section 1, progress towards our vision is
proceeding quickly around the world, as access continues
to grow at a significant pace. However, much development
work remains to be done to bring the economic and social
benefits of the Internet to everyone. Further, those who are
online are experiencing significant variations in their user
experience.
For non-Internet users, sitting on the other side of the so-
called digital divide, Internet access is clearly a critical
component. With the advent of mobile broadband, which can
be rolled out faster and at lower cost than fixed broadband,
access is no longer as critical an issue. Nonetheless,
affordability remains as a significant roadblock. As we
showed in Section 4, the average cost of broadband access
in many countries is still too high, and in some countries is
even greater than the average income of the citizens.
However, there is evidence that among those who have
access to the Internet and are able to afford it, there are
still many who choose not to go online. The PewResearch
Internet Project published the results of a May 2013 survey
in the United States, which revealed that 15% of American
adults did not use the Internet at all. Asked why, 34% of
non-users claimed that the Internet is not relevant to them
and 32% do not like to use the Internet because it is difficult
to use, while only 19% cite the cost and 7% the lack of
availability.
Similar results are found for other developed and emerging
countries. In a series of annual reports, the World Internet
Project polled non-adopters in a variety of countries to find
their reasons for not going online, with the possible choices
including “No interest/Not useful”, “Don’t Know How to Use/
Confused”, “No Computer/Internet”, “Too Expensive”, or
“No Time”.

130
We interpret that the traditional digital divide, relating to lack
of access or affordability, pertains to those who answered “No
Computer/Internet” or “Too Expensive”, while for the others
the primary reason was a lack of training, or interest, or the
time to access the Internet. In almost every country polled,
regardless of affordability, more non-users cited a lack of
interest than availability or affordability, as shown below, in
Figure 5.1.
Figure 5.1: Population of Internet users and non-users
[Source: Survey responses: Mexico, Poland, Russia, Sweden, United States, World Internet Project International Report 5th Edition (2013), Australia, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Spain,
Switzerland, United Kingdom World Internet Project International Report 4th Edition (2012), Hungary, United Arab Emirates, Chile, Israel, Japan, Portugal, World Internet Project International
Report 3rd Edition (2011). Affordability data: ITU 2013 Measuring the Information Society. Internet penetration data: ITU 2013, 2012, 2011.]
Proportion of population
Internet Users Non-Internet Users
Affordability
100%
0%
Affordability (subscription price/average income)Have Internet Cannot have InternetCould have Internet
8%
0%
Sweden
United Kingdom
New Zealand
Switzerland
Canada
USA
Australia
Japan
Spain
Israel
Poland
UAE
Hungary
Italy
Portugal
Russia
Brazil
Chile
Mexico
Colombia
100%

As a result, when considering how to increase Internet
penetration, it is important to differentiate those who could
have Internet access, but lack the interest, or training, from
those who do not have access or could not afford it anyway.
For those who cannot have Internet, significant efforts are
underway at the national and international level to study
and address the issues of the digital divide. For instance,
the Broadband Commission for Digital Development aims to
expand broadband access, while the Alliance for Affordable
Internet (A4AI) works to see the Broadband Commission
affordability target realised. The World Bank, Inter-American
Development Bank, regional clusters of countries, and many,
if not most, national governments are also working on a variety
of means to increase Internet access and affordability.
What is noticeable in the previous graph, however, is that the
proportion that seemingly could have Internet access, but
choose not to take it, remains significant, even in the countries
with lower penetration rates (and generally lower affordability).
This likely has to do with the fact that while the Internet is an
unparalleled network for facilitating global access, the local
experience is also critical. In countries with fewer users, the
Internet for many is less critical to everyday life, since there are
fewer local friends and family to contact, businesses are less
likely to arise to sell to a smaller market, and the government
cannot focus on the online experience at the expense of the
majority who are still offline. As a result, non-users may be
prone to express less interest in the Internet, which serves to
maintain a lower penetration status quo.
In addition to efforts to bridge the digital divide and increase
interest in the Internet among non-users, it is also important
to address the issues raised in Section 4 that impact those
already online, such as security and privacy concerns.
Addressing those issues will not just impact those already
online, but improve the experience for those considering
going online.
Based on the issues raised above, we think that the issues
in the following table should be addressed to improve the
Internet experience and increase access.
We note that any improvements for one group provide
potential benefits for the subsequent group of adopters. For
instance, addressing issues faced by current users, such as
privacy concerns, will also make the Internet more attractive
to those who have chosen not to access the Internet yet, while
addressing the content divide will make the Internet more
attractive to those for whom access is not yet possible.

132
Could have access
today
Content access Countries should create an enabling environment for companies to deploy caches
or servers to hold local or international content. As users connect to the Internet and
are exposed to an unlimited and boundless amount of content, they are incentivized
to create their own content and share their own ideas. Supporting and facilitating an
Internet environment where content is not subjected to policy restrictions – be it in the
form of liability or otherwise – is pivotal for a robust Internet ecosystem.
Content creation In order to help develop locally relevant content, governments can seed the market by
developing their own content. In addition to extending the reach of government services,
this can help to create online demand to access these services; create demand for data
centres to hold the government servers; increase usage of an Internet Exchange Point,
if available; and create jobs for local developers who can begin to innovate and create
private content and applications for the market.
Cannot have
Internet today
Access In addition to the actions described above to address resilience issues, governments can
remove domestic barriers to connectivity, such as high costs of accessing rights-of-way
for deploying fibre, and for building cell phone towers. In addition, the government can
facilitate infrastructure sharing using government property, such as deploying fibre ducts
next to roads, railroads, or using electricity transmission networks, and encourage or
require sharing of private infrastructure, including towers and existing networks.
Affordability Many actions outlined above will act to lower costs, by lowering the cost of deploying
infrastructure and of accessing local content. Additional actions can include removing
taxes on equipment, devices, and services that could act to depress demand. Finally,
to the extent that a country has a universal service obligation fund, it could be used to
subsidize construction of Internet access infrastructure in high-cost areas or to subsidize
demand in low-income areas.
Group Issue Remedy
Have Internet
access today
Resilience Increase diversity in two ways: first, increase operator diversity by liberalising the
international gateway market, lowering licensing costs, and reducing other barriers
to the development of international and domestic connectivity; second, increase
network and route diversity by working at the regional levels to reduce barriers to
cross-border connectivity so that more cross-border infrastructure can be deployed
and interconnected. The Internet Society has made it a key priority to advance the
deployment of core Internet infrastructure and evolution of technology to ensure the
sustainability and reliability of the Internet. This work includes extending our work in
developing Internet Exchange Points and addressing barriers to connectivity.
Security and
privacy
If the “Internet” becomes the “monitored Internet”, many of the economic and social
benefits that have emerged over the last 10 years will simply disappear. One country,
one stakeholder group or one individual cannot overcome this threat alone: but one
country can, through local policies, pose a significant threat to the Internet as a global
tool for social good. There is a real need for the global community to come together to
agree on strong ethical principles for Internet data-handling. The Internet Society has
made it a key priority to promote the robustness and resiliency of Internet security and
privacy through technology standards and deployment.
Content
availability
Content is the key driver and main facilitator for the Internet’s presence and future. The
Internet has provided users with the ability to become authors, creators, and publishers,
while, at the same time, engaging in various forms of social interaction. Users depend
on the Internet to retrieve information, exchange knowledge and know-how, interact with
their peers, and contribute to various discussion fora. The Internet Society has made it
a priority to seek ways to create an enabling environment for the creation, access, use,
and dissemination of content on the Internet.

5.2 Conclusion
As we near three billion Internet users, it is appropriate to step
back and marvel at the speed of adoption and changes that
have taken place to date. The multistakeholder model that was
central to the creation of the Internet has evolved and grown
to encompass Internet governance and key development
projects such as IXP creation.
As we look forward to the fourth billion user and beyond, it is
clear that it will be as difficult to forecast the twists and turns
we will collectively face as it would have been to forecast all
the events of the past ten years. It is remarkable that only in
2004 did fixed-broadband exceed dial-up access, or that the
first smartphone was only introduced in 2007. How many of us
could have imagined back then that mobile broadband would
so soon surpass fixed, developing country users surpass
developed country users, and video traffic surpass all other?
What is clear, however, is that the open Internet model, which
helped to fuel the growth and navigate all the bumps in the
road, continues to be the best way to ensure that the Internet
remains sustainable and continues to grow. How else could
an engineer in Togo raise money from strangers in Europe,
design and build a USD100 3D printer made of e-waste, and
submit his design for consideration to the US space agency,
NASA? Or a teenager in Mongolia have his potential identified
and end up a student at MIT? Or a new political party, led by
an Italian comedian, organize a cost-free online primary, and
within four years secure more seats in the House of Deputies
than any other party?
Working together, and honouring the Internet model, all the
stakeholders can meet the foreseen challenges outlined in
this section – and others as they arise – to make the Internet
yet more essential to end-users lives as citizens, consumers,
and innovators. At the same time, we can address the digital
divide that separates regions and people, and make sure that
once online, everyone has the same user experience. With
universal and uniform online access, anything is possible.

134
Annex A Definition of world regions
Figure A.1: Definition of world regions
WESTERN
EUROPE
• Andorra
• Austria
• Belgium
• Cyprus
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Iceland
• Ireland
• Italy
• Liechtenstein
• Luxembourg
• Malta
• Monaco
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Portugal
• San Marino
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
CENTRAL AND
EASTERN EUROPE
• Albania
• Belarus
• Bosnia and
Herzegovina
• Bulgaria
• Croatia
• Czech Republic
• Estonia
• Hungary
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• T.F.Y.R. Macedonia
• Moldova (Rep. of)
• Montenegro
• Poland
• Romania
• Russian Federation
• Serbia
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Turkey
• Ukraine
NORTH AMERICA
• Canada
• United States of
America
DEVELOPED
ASIA-PACIFIC
• Australia
• Brunei Darussalam
• French Polynesia
• Guam
• Hong Kong (S.A.R.)
• Japan
• Macao (S.A.R.)
• New Caledonia
• New Zealand
• Northern Marianas
Islands
• Singapore
• Korea (Rep. of)
• Taiwan, Province of
China
EMERGING
ASIA-PACIFIC
• Afghanistan
• American Samoa
• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Bangladesh
• Bhutan
• Cambodia
• China
• Cook Islands
• Fiji
• Georgia
• India
• Indonesia
• Kazakhstan
• Kiribati
• Kyrgyzstan
• Lao P.D.R.
• Malaysia
• Maldives
• Marshall Islands
• Micronesia
(Fed. States of)
• Mongolia
• Myanmar
• Nauru
• Nepal
• Niue
• Dem. People’s Rep. of
Korea
• Pakistan
• Palau
• Papua
New Guinea
• Philippines
• Samoa
• Solomon
Islands
• Sri Lanka
• Tajikistan
• Thailand
• Timor-Leste
• Tonga
• Turkmenistan
• Tuvalu
• Uzbekistan
• Vanuatu
• Viet Nam
MIDDLE EAST AND
NORTH AFRICA
• Algeria
• Bahrain
• Egypt
• Iran (Islamic Rep. of)
• Iraq
• Israel
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Lebanon
• Libya
• Morocco
• Oman
• Palestine (State of)
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia
• Syrian Arab Republic
• Tunisia
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen
LATIN AMERICA
AND CARIBBEAN
• Anguilla
• Antigua and Barbuda
• Netherlands Antilles
• Argentina
• Aruba
• Bahamas
• Barbados
• Belize
• Bermuda
• Bolivia (Plurinational
State of)
• Brazil
• Cayman Islands
• Chile
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Dominica
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• El Salvador
• Grenada
• Guatemala
• Guyana
• Haiti
• Honduras
• Jamaica
• Mexico
• Montserrat
• Nicaragua
• Panama
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Puerto Rico
• Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Lucia
• Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines
• Suriname
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Turks and Caicos Islands
• Uruguay
• Venezuela (Bolivarian
Republic of)
• Virgin Islands (British)
• Virgin Islands (US)
SUB-SAHARAN
AFRICA
• Angola
• Benin
• Botswana
• Burkina Faso
• Burundi
• Cameroon
• Cabo Verde
• Central African Republic
• Chad
• Comoros
• Congo
• Côte d’Ivoire
• Congo (Dem. Rep.
of the)
• Djibouti
• Equatorial Guinea
• Eritrea
• Ethiopia
• Gabon
• Gambia
• Ghana
• Guinea
• Guinea-Bissau
• Kenya
• Lesotho
• Liberia
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Mali
• Mauritania
• Mauritius
• Mayotte
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Niger
• Nigeria
• Réunion
• Rwanda
• Sao Tome
and Principe
• Senegal
• Seychelles
• Sierra Leone
• Somalia
• South Africa
• Saint Helena
• Sudan
• Swaziland
• Tanzania (United Rep.
of)
• Togo
• Uganda
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe
Regional groupings according to Analysys Mason; Country names from United Nations Statistical Division

Annex B Global Internet User Survey 2013 methodology
The Global Internet User Survey (GIUS) was commissioned
by the Internet Society and conducted among 10,500 Internet
users across 20 countries. All were people who have access
to the Internet, either at home, at work, or via mobile access.
People with no access to the Internet, or who choose never
to access the Internet, are excluded from the study.
Redshift Research conducted the interviews online in
December 2013 and January 2014 using an email invitation
and an online survey. Respondents were drawn from online
consumer panels in the relevant target countries.
Figure B.2: Survey responses
Participating Countries
500 users surveyed1000 users surveyed
USA
Argentina
South Korea
Philippines
Kenya
Saudi
Arabia
UAE
South Africa
Chile
Peru Indonesia
France
Spain
Italy
Germany
Poland
Brazil
China
Russia
India
Male
Female
Gender distribution

136
Results of any sample are subject to sampling variation. The
magnitude of the variation is measurable and is affected by
the number of interviews and the level of the percentages
expressing the results. In this particular study, the chances
are 95 in 100 that a survey result based on all 10,500
respondents does not vary, plus or minus, by more than
1% from the result that would be obtained if interviews had
been conducted with all persons in the group represented by
the sample. Results based on the sub-samples in individual
countries, being smaller (typically 500 in each country) will
be subject to a greater degree of error as a result (up to +/-
4.4% at 95% confidence limits).
The sample was selected from a variety of consumer panels
in each country. Every effort was made to ensure that the
final sample structure was as representative of the local
population of Internet users (in terms of age and gender)
as possible (remembering that the Internet population
is not necessarily the same as the general population).
In developed economies, such as the USA and western
European countries, the population of Internet users has a
very similar profile to the general population (as Internet use
is now extremely widespread). However, it should be noted
that in developing countries, the Internet population may well
have a younger age bias or, in some instances, be more
male-dominated than the general population. In general, the
panel composition in each country represents a live record
of Internet users that is broadly representative of the Internet
population at that point in time.
Age distribution
18-21 22-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65+
0
7%
10%
19%
18%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
3%
4%

CHAPTER 1 - THIS IS YOUR INTERNET: TRENDS AND GROWTH
1. “ITU releases 2014 ICT Figures”, 5 May 2014, http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2014/23.aspx#.
U23BbV73qQk
2. All ITU statistics used in this section can be found at http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx.
3. The definitions of each region we refer to in this report are set out in Annex A. The ITU will release country data for 2013
after the deadline for printing this report. As a result the regional level data in Figure 1.3 and other figures that rely on ITU
country level data will be for 2012 in the print version. However, we will update the data online, at
https://www.internetsociety.org/global-internet-report.
4. The five RIRs are:
• African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) serving Africa
• American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) serving the United States, Canada, and many Caribbean and North
Atlantic islands
• Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) serving the Asia-Pacific region
• Latin American and Caribbean Network Information Centre (LACNIC) serving Latin America and parts of the
Caribbean
• Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) serving Europe, the Middle East, and parts of
Central Asia.
5. See http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/internet-technology-matters/ipv6.
6. A /8 (“slash 8”) is a Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) block containing 16,777,216 addresses. There are 256 /8
blocks in the IPv4 address space.
7. See Section 3 for examples of the uses and benefits of the Internet today.
8. These numbers come from the Internet Domain Survey conducted by the Internet Systems Consortium. For more details,
see https://www.isc.org/services/survey.
9. ISC’s definition of a host is “a domain name that has an IP address (A) record associated with it. This would be any
computer system connected to the Internet (via full or part-time, direct or dialup connections). ie. example.com, www.
example.com”. See ISC’s definitions: https://www.isc.org/services/survey/definitions.
10. Broadband access networks can be used by network operators to deliver managed Internet services, such as IP
television (IPTV), which we do not address in this report.
11. Broadband is defined as speeds above the 0.128Mbit/s available on a narrowband network
12. In addition to traditional fixed connections, we include fixed wireless here. Fixed wireless broadband uses radio waves to
transmit data to the customer, but using equipment that is not easily moved – this could include an outdoor antenna, and
it is typically connected to a computer rather than a tablet or smartphone.
13. Video applications are defined here as including downloads and streaming, as well as short-form video such as YouTube,
and webcam viewing.
14. Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI), http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/sp/vni/vni_forecast_highlights/index.html.
15. See Sandvine Global Internet Phenomena 2H 2013: https://www.sandvine.com/trends/global-internet-phenomena.
16. See OECD Broadband Portal: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/oecdbroadbandportal.htm.
17. We expect that the majority of mobile access subscriptions will be mobile broadband services. However, this is difficult to
assess precisely because the number of 2G mobile subscriptions that are, at least in part, used for Internet access is not
known.
18. Here, mobile broadband connections comprise 3G and 4G handsets, mid-screen devices, dongles, routers, and machine-
to-machine (M2M) connections.
19. Fixed line services are typically purchased on a per-household basis. Mobile services, on the other hand, may be
purchased by each individual within a household. In some cases, individuals may even have more than one mobile
access device (e.g., a smartphone, a laptop, and a tablet). On the other hand, as mentioned above, in other cases
individuals within a household may share one device.
20. This is the most popular video application on mobile in North America, unlike for fixed connections, where it is Netflix.
21. YouTube traffic fell from a peak of nearly 25% of peak mobile traffic in the first half of 2013. See Sandvine Global Internet
Phenomena H2 2013: https://www.sandvine.com/trends/global-internet-phenomena.
22. Features include Dual SIM, QWERTY keypad, SD card slot up to 32GB, Internal memory 64MB, Stereo FM radio, Wi-Fi, 2.0 MP
camera, MP3/MP4. See MTN Zambia list of smartphones: http://mtnzambia.com/index.php/en/personal/shop/smart-phones.
23. The Tecno M3 has the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system, a dual-core processor, video calling and accelerated
graphics, See Price in Kenya: http://www.priceinkenya.com/tag/0-9-999.
24. See the UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport, “The UK Spectrum Strategy”: https://www.gov.uk/government/
publications/spectrum-strategy.
References

138
25. A 2011 Real Wireless report for Ofcom on 4G capacity gains found that a 1.2 times improvement in spectral efficiency
was realistic between high-end 3G networks and initial 4G network deployments. See: http://www.apwpt.org/downloads/
ofcommay2011_4gcapacitygainsfinalreport_main.pdf. However, this difference is expected to grow with future 4G releases.
26. See Moore Stephens “Africa Desk News Bulletin”: http://www.moorestephens.co.za/images/uploads/MS-Africa_News_
Desk_Kenya.pdf.
27. See Safaricom Ltd Hi FY14 Presentation, 5th November 2013: http://www.safaricom.co.ke/images/Downloads/
Resources_Downloads/Half_Year_2013-2014_Results_Presentation.pdf?itembanner=31.
28. For mobile phone, Y0 may be a few years after the initial launch of the technology and, in fact, in line with when
penetration levels of any note arose and were reported.
29. These launch dates are common to all the developing regions shown in the charts, aside from Latin America, for which
the cellular Y0 is 1994.
30. For all of the results and a description of the methodology, see https://www.internetsociety.org/survey.
CHAPTER 2 - OPEN AND SUSTAINABLE INTERNET
1. For a brief history of the Internet, written by a number of its founders, including Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D.
Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Lawrence G. Roberts, and Stephen Wolff, see
http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet.
2. See NTIA’s Press Release: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-transition-key-internet-
domain-name-functions.
3. For the Internet Society’s statement, see
http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-technical-leaders-welcome-iana-globalization-progress.
4. For more details on the Internet ecosystem and its participants, see http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/who-makes-it-work.
5. The working definition of Internet governance proposed by WGIG can be found in the WGIG Report.
See: http://www.wgig.org/WGIG-Report.html.
6. ibid
7. See CGI website: http://cgi.br.
8. See http://www.cgi.br/noticia/lei-do-marco-civil-da-internet-e-uma-grande-vitoria-para-os-brasileiros-considera-cgi-br/408.
9. For more information on NETmundial, along with a link to the NETmundial Multistakeholder Statement, see http://
netmundial.br. For reaction, see http://www.internetsociety.org/blog/institutional/2014/04/netmundial-variations-theme-
multistakeholder-consensus-building-action.
10. See Kapersky “Security Bulletin. Spam Evolution 2013”: for more details. http://www.securelist.com/en/
analysis/204792322/Kaspersky_Security_Bulletin_Spam_evolution_2013.
11. For more details on the Combating Spam Project, and links to further resources,
see http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/policy/combating-spam-project.
12. See http://open-stand.org.
13. See RFC 3935: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3935.txt.
14. See Daigle, L. 2013 “The Internet and OpenStand: The Internet Didn’t Happen by Accident”: http://www.circleid.com/
posts/20131014_internet_and_openstand_the_internet_didnt_happen_by_accident.
15. For more information, see http://www.opus-codec.org.
16. RFC stands for ‘Request for Comments’ and refers to official publications of the IETF. See http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716.
17. WebRTC (which stands for Web Real-Time Communication) is a set of protocols defined by the W3C to support browser-
to-browser communications such as voice over IP without the use of plug-in software.
18. For more examples, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_codec).
19. For more information, see http://www.internetsociety.org/development.
20. See http://www.internetsociety.org/events/workshops/axis-project-and-axis-workshops.
21. The process of sending domestic traffic outside the country to be exchanged and then routed back to the same country is
sometimes known as ‘tromboning’. For a review of the benefits of an IXP, see Kende, M. & Hurpy, C. 2012 “Assessment
of the Impact of Internet Exchange Points – Empirical Study of Kenya and Nigeria”, see http://www.internetsociety.org/
news/new-study-reveals-how-internet-exchange-points-ixps-spur-internet-growth-emerging-markets.
22. See http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-exchange-point-launched-7-march-2014-windhoek-namibia,
http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-exchange-point-launched-21-march-2014-bujumbura-burundi, and http://
www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-exchange-point-launched-10-april-2014-mbabane-kingdom-swaziland
23. See http://www.ixptoolkit.org.
24. See http://www.internetsociety.org/cisco-signs-three-year-commitment-internet-society-programs-including-
interconnection-and-traffic.
25. For further details, see http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/where-we-work/asia/south-asia/wireless-communities.
26. See https://www.facebook.com/chanderisaris.

CHAPTER 3 - BENEFITS OF AN OPEN AND SUSTAINABLE INTERNET
1. Newspapers largely focus on their home markets, while radio and television requires spectrum to broadcast, which is
licensed on a national level. As a result, traditional broadcast media content can typically only extend beyond borders
through agreement between owners of the content in one country and owners of a mass medium in another.
2. See http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm.
3. See OECD 2002, “Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries”: http://
unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001285/128515e.pdf.
4. For the announcement of the textbook repository, see http://news.priyo.com/video/2011/04/24/pm-opens-online-version-
textbo-24346.html. The textbooks are made available by the National Curriculum and Textbook Board, at http://www.
nctb.gov.bd/downloadpage22.php.
5. See the New York Times, 13 September 2013, “The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator”: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/
magazine/the-boy-genius-of-ulan-bator.html?_r=0.
6. See Van den Berg, D.J. 2013, “Why MOOCS Are Transforming the Face of Higher Education”, http://www.huffingtonpost.
co.uk/dirk-jan-van-den-berg/why-moocs-are-transforming_b_4116819.html
7. For further discussion of the digital divide between countries, see Section 4.
8. See Pew Research Center “Predicting the Future on the Web’s 25th Anniversary”, http://www.pewinternet.
org/2014/03/11/predicting-the-future-on-the-webs-25th-anniversary.
9. See http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us.
10. See BBC News, “Italy’s Five Start protest party makes waves”, 5 December 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-20643620.
11. See http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/29567161.
12. See http://www.beppegrillo.it.
13. See, The Guardian 2013, “How Beppe Grillo’s Social Media Politics took Italy by Storm”: http://www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/2013/feb/26/beppe-grillo-politics-social-media-italy.
14. See Demos 2013, “New Political Actors in Europe: Beppe Grillo and the M5S”, http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/
newpoliticalactorsineuropebeppegrilloandthem5s.
15. However, both Bersani and Berlusconi were leading coalitions and therefore able to receive a greater proportion of the
vote, M5S came third overall.
16. See Estonian National Electoral Committee, http://www.vvk.ee/voting-methods-in-estonia/engindex/statistics.
17. See http://www.id.ee/?lang=en.
18. Passenger rail services in the UK are franchised for a pre-defined period of time to train operating companies that
purchase wholesale access to the tracks, run train services, and retail these services to end customers.
19. See “Reconsider West Coast Mainline franchise decision”, http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/37180.
20. See BBC News, “West Coast Main Line deal scrapped after contract flaws discovered,” 3 October 2012, http://www.bbc.
com/news/business-19809717.
21. See “We the People: Your Voice in our Government”, https://petitions.whitehouse.gov.
22. See “A Comprehensive Approach to Wall Street Reform”, https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/comprehensive-
approach-wall-street-reform.
23. The White House released several beer recipes (featured ingredient: honey) in response to the petition. See https://
petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/release-recipe-honey-ale-home-brewed-white-house/XkpkYwc0.
24. According to the White House, “a Death Star isn’t on the horizon.” See https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/secure-
resources-and-funding-and-begin-construction-death-star-2016/wlfKzFkN.
25. See Kenya Revenue Authority, http://www.revenue.go.ke.
26. See Chancellor George Osborne’s Autumn Statement 2013 speech, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/
chancellor-george-osbornes-autumn-statement-2013-speech.
27. See The World Bank – Open Government Data Toolkit, http://data.worldbank.org/open-government-data-toolkit.
28. See http://www.e-gov.waseda.ac.jp/ranking.htm.
29. “Institute of e-Government released the 2013 World –Government Ranking,” 26 March 2013, http://www.waseda.jp/eng/
news12/130326_egov.html.
30. Singapore e-Gov, see http://www.egov.gov.sg/home.
31. See Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, http://www.ida.gov.sg/Business-Sectors/Overview.
32. For instance, a change.org petition in the UK asked the BBC to reverse their decision to cancel Ripper Street, see http://
www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/reverse-the-bbc-s-decision-to-cancel-ripper-street.
33. See The Guardian 2012, “Avaaz faces questions over role at centre of Syrian protest movement”, http://www.
theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/02/avaaz-activist-group-syria.
34. See http://www.avaaz.org/en/about.php.
35. See http://www.change.org/en-GB/about.

140
36. See Tell Bank of America: No $5 Debit Card Fees, http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-bank-of-america-no-5-debit-card-
fees.
37. See http://www.ipaidabribe.com/bribe-trends.
38. See http://www.cchrcambodia.org.
39. See https://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk.
40. See http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/some-weekend-work-that-will-hopefully.html.
41. See the Government of Dubai, 2011, “Arab Social Media Report: Civil Movements:
The Impact of Facebook and Twitter”, http://www.dsg.ae/en/publication/Description.
aspx?PubID=236&PrimenuID=11&mnu=Pri&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1.
42. See eMarketer, 2013, “Ecommerce Sales Topped $1 Trillion for First Time in 2012”, http://www.emarketer.com/Article/
Ecommerce-Sales-Topped-1-Trillion-First-Time-2012/1009649.
43. See Etsy 2013, “Redefining Entrepreneurship: EtsySellers’ Economic Impact”, https://blog.etsy.com/news/2013/
redefining-entrepreneurship-etsy-sellers-economic-impact.
44. See http://www.etsy.com/uk/press.
45. McKinsey & Company, 2013 “Lions go digital: The Internet’s transformative potential in Africa”, see http://www.mckinsey.
com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/lions_go_digital_the_internets_transformative_potential_in_africa.
46. See http://www.kayak.co.uk.
47. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showrooming.
48. See http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=aw_ppricecheck_iphone_mobile. An additional benefit of this app for
Amazon is that it can build a database of retail pricing, which it can use to refine its own pricing.
49. Of course, trust violations occur, and often receive significant press, but not with a frequency that appears to impede the
growth of the market. See Techcrunch 2014, “How Modern Marketplaces Like Uber and AirBnB Build Trust to Achieve
Liquidity”: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/how-modern-marketplaces-like-uber-and-airbnb-build-trust-to-achieve-
liquidity.
50. “State of the Least Developed Countries 2013”, UN-OHRLLS 2013.
51. Ranked 168th in the category “Starting a Business” and 130th in “Getting Credit” out of 189 countries surveyed.
52. The Guardian, 14 December 2013 “Toxic ‘e-waste’ dumped in poor nations, says United Nations”, http://www.theguardian.
com/global-development/2013/dec/14/toxic-ewaste-illegal-dumping-developing-countries.
53. Fast Company 2013, “This African Inventor created a $100 3-D Printer from E-waste”, http://www.fastcompany.
com/3019880/this-african-inventor-created-a-100-3-d-printer-from-e-waste.
54. See https://2013.spaceappschallenge.org/project/wafate-to-mars.
55. PC Advisor 2013, “The top 5 Kickstarter success stories: Oculus Rift, Pebble smart watch, Ouya and more”, http://www.
pcadvisor.co.uk/features/internet/3471652/top-5-kickstarter-successes.
56. “The Mozilla Manifesto”, https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto.
57. See https://github.com.
58. A language of the Bantu family, native to parts of Namibia, Botswana, and Angola, and spoken by 240,000 people. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_language.
59. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikipedias.
60. See Wikimedia Report Card at http://reportcard.wmflabs.org.
61. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_projects_edits_counter_2010-04-16.png.
62. See http://fold.it/portal.
63. Unfortunately, these platforms also carry the potential to be misused for cyberbullying, or hacked, leading to significant
negative consequences. See for example USA Today, 2013, “AP Twitter feed hacked; no attack at White House” http://
www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/04/23/obama-carney-associated-press-hack-white-house/2106757/.
64. See eMarketer, 2013, “US Total Media Ad Spend Inches Up, Pushed by Digital”: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/US-
Total-Media-Ad-Spend-Inches-Up-Pushed-by-Digital/1010154.
65. World Association of Newspaper and News Publishers, http://www.wan-ifra.org.
66. See Internet Live Stats, http://www.internetlivestats.com/one-second.
67. See https://about.twitter.com/company.
68. Business Insider, 2013, “Our List Of The World’s Largest Social Networks Shows How Video, Messages, And China Are
Taking Over the Social Web”, see http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-largest-social-networks-2013-12.
69. See Superdata 2013, “INFOGRAPHIC: Digital games year in review 2013” http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/
infographic-digital-games-year-review-2013.
70. See Superdata 2013, “Brazil online games market report” http://www.superdataresearch.com/market-data/brazils-online-
gaming-market.
71. Forbes 2013, “Rovio Execs Explain What Angry Birds Toons Channel Opens Up To Its 1.7 Billion Gamers”, see http://www.forbes.
com/sites/johngaudiosi/2013/03/11/rovio-execs-explain-what-angry-birds-toons-channel-opens-up-to-its-1-7-billion-gamers.

72. See Bloomberg 2013, “‘Grand Theft Auto V’ Debut Expected to Reap $1 Billion”, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-
09-17/scuba-diving-thugs-to-reap-1-billion-with-grand-theft-.html.
73. See http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png.
74. See BBC 2007, “The high cost of playing Warcraft”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7007026.stm.
75. IFPI 2013, “Digital Music Report 2013”; http://www.ifpi.org/digital-music-report-2013.php.
76. See http://www.apple.com/choose-your-country.
77. Apple Press Info 2013, “iTunes Store Sets New Record with 25 Billion Songs Sold”, http://www.apple.com/uk/pr/
library/2013/02/06iTunes-Store-Sets-New-Record-with-25-Billion-Songs-Sold.html.
78. Youtube Official Blog 2013, “YouTube Rewind: What you watched in 2013”, http://youtube-global.blogspot.se/2013/12/
youtube-rewind-2013.html.
79. Letter to shareholders, 21 April 2014, http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/3161131289x0x745654/fb5aaae0-
b991-4e76-863c-3b859c8dece8/Q114%20Earnings%20Letter%204.21.14%20final.pdf.
80. See Netflix Investor Relations: http://ir.netflix.com/results.cfm.
81. See The Wall Street Journal, 2013, “Netflix Makes Some History With Showing at Emmys”, http://online.wsj.com/news/
articles/SB10001424052702303759604579092061505560526.
82. Los Angeles Times 2013, “Netflix and Disney’s Marvel strike blockbuster deal for new shows”, http://www.latimes.com/
entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-netflix-marvel-disney-20131107,0,3396157.story#axzz2zi3JbTRS.
CHAPTER 4 - CHALLENGES TO THE OPEN AND SUSTAINABLE INTERNET
1. Apple alone lists a total of 33 different physical keyboard localizations that it supplies with its personal computers, ranging
from Arabic to Turkish. See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2841. Further, Apple offers 60 virtual keyboards for touch-
screen devices such as iPhones.
2. To power the computer, worldwide there are fourteen different plug types that must be adapted, electricity of eight
different voltages that must be converted, and two different frequencies for which transformation is not possible unless
the capability is built into the device (see http://www.iec.ch/worldplugs/map.htm). Of course, most computer adapters can
accommodate different voltages and frequencies automatically, but the need to do so highlights the impact of not having a
global standard.
3. On the fixed side, modems are different for DSL access over telephone lines, cable networks, or fibre networks, while on
the mobile side, there are a jumble of different standards and frequencies for accessing mobile broadband, meaning that
a mobile may need to be multi-band or multi-mode to work internationally. See http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-
phone12.htm for more details.
4. The costs of Internet access used here are either fixed or mobile broadband computer-based costs, see ITU 2013
“Measuring the Information Society”: http://www.itu.int/pub/D-IND-ICTOI-2013. We used the fixed or mobile broadband
prices depending on availability and which is the cheapest in each country. In general the cheaper of the two prices is
used, but where fixed broadband penetration (which is generally lower than mobile broadband penetration in developing
countries) falls below 20% of households, the mobile broadband price is used, even where this is the higher of the two
prices. The mobile broadband price is for 1GB of data accessed via a dongle that connects to a computer, rather than
access for a mobile phone or tablet.
Analysing the prices of Internet access using only fixed or only mobile products would not significantly change the
findings. For example, all fixed broadband prices available for Western Europe, North America, and developed Asia-
Pacific fall below 2.5% of GDP per capita, while mobile prices for all but three countries in those same regions also
fall below the 2.5% of GDP per capita line. These three countries are Cyprus, Greece, and the Netherlands, where
mobile prices for 1GB of computer-based mobile-broadband data are 2.9%, 3.0%, and 3.6% of monthly GDP per capita
respectively.
5. Note that these broadband prices do not control for the quality of the service provided, as measured for instance
by maximum or average download bandwidth speeds. Instead, the affordability measure shows the affordability of
broadband offers available to users in their country. Later in this section, we show differences in broadband speeds, which
also serve to differentiate user experiences by country.
6. The Broadband Commission 2011, “Broadband Targets for 2015”, see http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/
Broadband_Targets.pdf.
7. The Broadband Commission 2013, “The State of Broadband 2013: Universalizing Broadband”, see http://www.
broadbandcommission.org/Documents/bb-annualreport2013.pdf, pp 44-45.
8. M-Lab - Visualizations of Network Performance, see http://www.measurementlab.net/visualizations.
9. See Digital Agenda Scoreboard 2013, Belgium: Broadband Markets https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-
agenda/files/BE%20%20-%20Broadband%20markets.pdf.
10. See Australian Bureau of Statistics, Advertised Download Speed, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/
Products/8153.0~June+2013~Chapter~Advertised+download+speed?OpenDocument.
11. For population density data, see http://www.tradingeconomics.com.

142
12. See “The Coalition’s Plan For Fast Broadband and Affordable NBN”: http://lpa.webcontent.s3.amazonaws.com/NBN/
The%20Coalition%E2%80%99s%20Plan%20for%20Fast%20Broadband%20and%20an%20Affordable%20NBN.pdf.
13. See for instance Kende, M & Schuman, R. 2013 “Lifting Barriers to Internet Development in Africa: Suggestions for
Improving Connectivity”: http://www.internetsociety.org/doc/lifting-barriers-internet-development-africa-suggestions-
improving-connectivity.
14. For further discussion of the opportunities and challenges of deploying an IXP, see also http://www.ixptoolkit.org.
15. See The Guardian 2011 “Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia”: http://www.theguardian.com/
world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access.
16. Gigaom 2013, “Undersea cable cut near Egypt slows down Internet in Africa, Middle East, South Asia”, see http://gigaom.
com/2013/03/27/undersea-cable-cut-near-egypt-slows-down-internet-in-africa-middle-east-south-asia.
17. See OpenNet Initiative, “Pulling the Plug: A Technical Review of the Internet Shutdown in Burma”, https://opennet.net/
research/bulletins/013.
18. Renesys, 2012 “Syrian Internet Is Off The Air”: http://www.renesys.com/2012/11/syria-off-the-air.
19. Renesys 2011, “Egypt Leaves the Internet”, see http://www.renesys.com/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-internet.
20. See Renesys, 2012, “Could It Happen In Your Country?” http://www.renesys.com/2012/11/could-it-happen-in-your-countr.
21. See http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/docs/gc34.pdf at paragraph 15.
22. Paragraph 3 states that “Freedom of expression is a necessary condition for the realization of the principles of
transparency and accountability that are, in turn, essential for the promotion and protection of human rights.” Id.
23. Id. at paragraph 43.
24. See https://abena.crowdmap.com/main.
25. See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/crisiscommons/cqjic_InrtE.
26. See Song, S. 2014 “African Undersea Cables”, http://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables.
27. See ITWeb Financial, 2011 “WACS to increase competition”, http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=43079.
28. Netflix lists the speeds of six broadband providers, over which their customers are streaming video. See http://
ispspeedindex.netflix.com/costa-rica.
29. See ITU ICTEYE, “Focus Areas – Regulatory Information”, at https://www.itu.int/net4/itu-d/icteye/FocusAreas.
aspx?paramWorkArea=TREG.
30. See http://www.freedomhouse.org/reports#.UtP0EbnuN9M. Freedom House measures three aspects of Internet freedom:
Obstacles to Access; Limits on Content; and Violations of User Rights. For purposes of this section, we focus on Limits on
Content.
31. Low scores indicate high degrees of freedom with regard to content limits, i.e. filtering and blocking of websites,
censorship and use of media for social and political activism.
32. See Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli (AAMS) http://www.aams.gov.it/site.php?id=2484.
33. See EDRi, 2011 “France: Loppsi 2 adopted – Internet filtering without court order”, http://edri.org/edrigramnumber9-4web-
blocking-adopted-france-loppsi-2.
34. See https://www.iwf.org.uk/about-iwf.
35. See http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2008-06-16b.209620.h; https://www.iwf.org.uk/members/member-policies/
url-list/iwf-list-recipients.
36. See BBC, 2008 “Wikipedia child image censored”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7770456.stm.
37. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_Wikipedia.
38. See The Sydney Morning Herald, 2009 “Dentist’s website on leaked blacklist”, http://www.smh.com.au/national/dentists-
website-on-leaked-blacklist-20090319-93cl.html.
39. Bahrain Information Affairs Authority: http://www.iaa.bh/policiesPressrules.aspx.
40. See http://www.herdict.org/explore/indepth?fc=BH.
41. See http://bahrainrights.org.
42. YouTube, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter are among the international sites permanently blocked by China.
43. See China Digital Times, 2013 “Saying of the Week: China’s Internet is Open”: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/saying-
of-the-week-chinas-internet-is-open.
44. See CircleID, 2009 “China Blocks Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Hotmail, Windows Live, etc. Ahead of Tiananmen 20th Anniversary”
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090602_china_blocks_twitter_flickr_bing_hotmail_windows_live/
45. Yahoo News, 2011 “Myanmar authorities unblock some banned websites”, see http://news.yahoo.com/myanmar-
authorities-unblock-banned-websites-050311492.html.
46. Live broadcasts are also available on BBC iPlayer, but consumers must purchase a UK TV license in order to watch these.
However, this is only an additional cost for those consumers who do not own a TV set, since any household using a TV set
is required to purchase a TV license whether or not they use the iPlayer service.

47. Available in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada.
See http://www.youtube.com/BBCiplayerglobal.
48. See http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/programmes/availableprogs.
49. See YouTube 2013, “Netflix Quick Guide: Why Is Netflix Different in Each Country”, http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=LxnpqobGSzg&feature=youtu.be.
50. See the blog “Netflix Canada vs USA” for more information http://netflixcanadavsusa.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/alphabetical-
list-kmon-jan-13-2014.html#more.
51. See https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2843119?hl=en-GB. We understand that content availability continues to
expand, as more and more countries receive access to content, even since we gathered our data in January 2014.
52. With over 1.7 billion downloads of the game series by November 2013, see Section 3.
53. See http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_CJE-11-102_en.htm.
54. Here Chinese refers to the Chinese language family, which includes Mandarin and Cantonese. See http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Chinese_language.
55. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a code for representing English characters as numbers, with
each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127.
56. For more information on IDNs, see http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn. For more on the IETF’s Email Address
Internationalization (EAI) see http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/eai.
57. See http://extranews.net.
58. See http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/local_content_study.pdf.
59. Brian Muita, of Angani Limited, presented this at the Internet Society’s African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) in
Casablanca, Morocco, 5 September 2013. See http://www.internetsociety.org/doc/panel-session-role-research-innovation-
and-entrepreneurship-brian-muita-angani.
60. For further details, see Section 3.2.2 of the following paper: Kende, M. & Hurpy, C. 2012 “Assessment of the Impact of
Internet Exchange Points – Empirical Study of Kenya and Nigeria”, see http://www.internetsociety.org/news/new-study-
reveals-how-internet-exchange-points-ixps-spur-internet-growth-emerging-markets.
61. According to RIPE:
RIPE Atlas is a global network of thousands of probes that measure Internet connectivity and reachability, providing an
unprecedented understanding of the state of the Internet in real time. The entire Internet community can access the data
collected by the network, as well as Internet maps, graphs and analyses based on the aggregated results. RIPE Atlas
is coordinated by the RIPE NCC, one of five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) that support the global operation of the
Internet.
See https://atlas.ripe.net.
62. The probes were scheduled to provide a one-off ping measurement to www.youtube.com which was executed on 28
February 2014 at 05:17 UTC; 4,875 probes across 126 countries provided data. The probes were also scheduled to provide
a one-off ping measurement to www.facebook.com on 24 April 2014 at 20:45 UTC; 5,257 probes across 136 countries
provided data.
63. For more information on the operation and benefits of a cache, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_cache.
64. For more information on the GGC, see https://peering.google.com/about/ggc.html.
65. The Next Web, 2013 “Facebook opens its first data center outside the US, near the Arctic Circle in Luleå, Sweden”: http://
thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/06/12/facebook-opens-its-first-data-center-outside-the-us-near-the-arctic-circle-in-lulea-
sweden.
66. See The Guardian 2013, “We cannot afford to be indifferent to Internet spying”, http://www.theguardian.com/
technology/2013/dec/09/internet-surveillance-spying.
67. See BBC, 2013 “Edward Snowden leaks: NSA ‘debates’ amnesty”, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25399345.
68. See interview with Glenn Greenwald, GQ, May 2014, “The Man Who Knows Too Much”, http://www.gq.com/news-politics/
newsmakers/201406/glenn-greenwald-edward-snowden-no-place-to-hide.
69. See The New York Times, 2014 “Revelations of N.S.A. Spying Cost U.S. Tech Companies”, http://www.nytimes.
com/2014/03/22/business/fallout-from-snowden-hurting-bottom-line-of-tech-companies.html.
70. See Financial Times, 2014 “Microsoft to shield foreign users’ data”, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e14ddf70-8390-11e3-aa65-
00144feab7de.html#axzz2ri2Hk2sM.
71. See The Huffington Post, 2013, “Marco Civil: Brazil’s Push to Govern the Internet”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/t-a-ridout/
brazils-push-to-govern-the-internet_b_4133811.html.
72. See Bloomberg, 2014 “Brazil House Passes Internet Bill as Data Demand Dropped”, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-
03-26/brazil-house-passes-internet-bill-as-data-demand-dropped.html.
73. See Reuters, 2013 “Brazil’s anti-spying Internet push could backfire, industry says”. See http://www.reuters.com/
article/2013/10/02/us-brazil-internet-idUSBRE9910F120131002
74. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggar_thy_neighbour.

144
A global, cause-driven organization, the Internet Society is a leading advocate for the ongoing development of the Internet as an
open platform that serves the social, economic, and educational needs of people throughout the world.
Founded in 1992 by several Internet pioneers, the Internet Society works in the areas of technology, policy, and development to
promote an open, accessible Internet for everyone. A shared vision of keeping the Internet open unites the 60,000 individuals,
more than 100 Chapters, and more than 150 Organizations around the world that are members of the Internet Society. Together,
we represent a worldwide network focused on identifying and addressing the challenges and opportunities that exist online
today and in the years ahead.
To achieve our mission, the Internet Society:
• Champions public policies that support a free and open Internet;
• Facilitates the open development of Internet standards and protocols to allow everyone to connect to everything on line;
• Offers discussion forums on issues that affect Internet evolution, development, and use in technical, commercial, societal,
and other contexts;
• Works globally on Internet issues, leveraging Regional Bureaus and Chapters for collaboration and engagement that
strengthens our impact and relevance at the local level; and
• Promotes professional development and builds community to foster participation and leadership in areas important to the
Internet’s evolution.
For more information, visit www.internetsociety.org
Internet Society

Internet Society
Galerie Jean-Malbuisson 15
CH-1204 Geneva, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 807 1444 - Fax: +41 22 807 1445
1775 Wiehle Ave. Suite 201
Reston, VA 20190, USA
Tel: +1 703 439 2120 - Fax: +1 703 326 9881
www.internetsociety.org
info@isoc.org

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