The high cost of Internet access, relative to income, remains one of the main barriers to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) services, keeping nearly half of the people within fourth-generation (4G) coverage areas offline worldwide.

A new policy brief by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Alliance for Affordable Internet found that, while 85% of the world’s population now lived within 4G coverage areas, nearly half were still offline in 2020.

‘The affordability of ICT services 2020’ report analyses mobile broadband, fixed broadband, mobile data and voice low use, mobile data and voice high use and mobile cellular low use, with service prices in all five categories continuing a slow but steady decline over the past year.

It found that the worldwide median price for both mobile- and fixed-broadband services dropped by 0.2 percentage points over the past year to 1.7% and 2.9% of monthly gross national income per capita respectively.

Over the past year, the number of economies that met the 2% affordability target of the Broadband Commission on Sustainable Development increased by six. Out of the 190 economies covered in the report, 106 have achieved the target, while 84 economies have prices above the target.

“The declining price trend for mobile and fixed broadband is encouraging, but we need to strengthen our efforts to lower the prices in developing countries,” says ITU secretary- general Houlin Zhao.

Developing countries were the main drivers of the global price decline; however, a pronounced affordability gap remains between developed and developing countries, particularly for baskets that include at least 1.5 GB of data.

Taking income differences into account, a mobile broadband subscription with at least 1.5 GB of data costs about four times more in developing countries than in the developed economies.

About 45% of the countries covered in the survey remain above the 2% affordability target for the data-only mobile-broadband basket, whereas the fixed-broadband basket was unaffordable in 56% of the countries.

“ICT services in the majority of least-developed countries (LDCs) remain prohibitively expensive, even for entry-level users. Despite the median price decline in the past year, the mobile broadband data-only basket was unaffordable in 39 out of 43 LDCs, while the fixed-broadband basket was unaffordable in 32 out of the 33 LDCs for which data are available,” explains ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau director Doreen Bogdan-Martin.

In developed economies, the median speed of entry-level connections increased from 30 Mb/s to 40 Mb/s in 2020. In developing countries, it only increased from 3 Mb/s to 5 Mb/s.

Africa witnessed the biggest price decreases in all five categories in relative terms, although its median prices remain well above world prices. In general, regional disparities are less pronounced than the gap between economies with different income levels.