The ITU has produced another excellent video describing Internet growth across the world. Visualized are mobile voice, 3G, Internet users, broadband, and pricing as of 2011. Only the last slide applies directly to Africa, but a variety highlight developing nations (there are 144 of them globally!). The story isn’t necessarily new (mobile voice is common, 3G is still scarce, mobile broadband is growing fast, there’s a huge youth potential, access costs are decreasing), but it is still worth sharing.

To summarize:

• Over 100 countries have mobile-cellular penetration exceeding 100%
• Over 90% of the world’s population is covered by 2G networks
• Over 87% of mobile subscriptions in the developing world are pre-paid (70% globally)
• More than 160 countries have launched 3G service (1/2 the population is covered)
• 2.3 billion people are online (has doubled in five years)
• There are nearly twice as many mobile broadband subscriptions as fixed
• Mobile broadband subscriptions grew 76% year-on-year in the developing world
• Over 2/3 of people under age 25 in developing countries are not yet online
• 127 of 144 developing countries have a national broadband plan
• The relative price of ICT services has dropped by 30% between 2008-2011
• South Africa is the 15th largest telecommunication market in the world in terms of revenue to GDP ratio

Data is from ‘Measuring the Information Society 2012’ and the ITU database. Further ICT statistics can be found at ITU’s ICT Eye.