1 bn people have Internet access: Survey

The United States is still number one in terms of numbers of Internet users with 175 million.

More than one billion people in the world have access to the Internet, with a quarter of them with broadband, or high-speed connections, according to a survey released on Thursday.

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The report by the firm eMarketer said the milestone of one billion was reached in late 2005, and that nearly 250 million households had broadband connections.

The firm estimates that of these people, 845 million use the Internet regularly.

The United States is still number one in terms of numbers of Internet users with 175 million, and broadband households, 43.7 million.

In terms of regions, however, Asia-Pacific has the largest number (315 million) and is the largest broadband centre containing nearly 40 per cent of the world's broadband households.

Latin America was the fastest growing broadband region worldwide, achieving 70 per cent subscriber growth, the survey found. But it had just 70 million people online.

Europe had 233 million people online and 55.2 million broadband households. China had 111 million users and 34.1 million households with fast connections.