More than a billion served
More than 1 billion people will be accessing the Internet by 2005, according to a recently released report from eTForecasts, a research company in Buffalo Grove, Ill.
The precise figure predicted, 1.17 billion online users, is almost triple the number of people—414 million—who were plugged in at the end of last year, according to the report.
Growth in Internet access in Asia, Latin America and Europe is expected to account for the lions share of the 1.17 billion figure, with wireless devices accounting for 713 million users getting access in areas that lack the infrastructure required for other types of access.
Get off the line, you whippersnappers
Those wily kids may have gotten a jump-start on the Internet, but a new study shows that retired people are starting to catch up.
In December, the number of retired people going online in the United States jumped 28.1 percent, to a total of 8.6 million unique visitors, according to a survey from NetValue USA Inc., in New York. The report also said that retired people now represent 10.2 percent of the overall U.S. Internet population.
Retirees—whom NetValue says are not necessarily seniors—connected to the Internet an average of 15.9 days in December, an increase of 1.2 days over November. They are more active than students, spending twice as many days online, and clicking on twice as many banner ads, according to the report.