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COVID-19 and the Great Lockdown triggered a mass migration from analog to digital and highlighted that access to the Internet is crucial for socioeconomic inclusion. However, Internet usage remains a luxury: half of the world's population does not have access to the Internet, either through a mobile device or through fixed line broadband. The digital divide - the gap between those who have Internet access and those who don't - is more like a chasm, both within and between countries.

"Mobile internet connectivity has continued to grow in many countries across South Asia during 2020. Despite, or perhaps partly driven by, the COVID-19 pandemic, 34% of the population were using mobile internet in the region, double what it was in 2014 and an increase of 40 million people since 2019. Mobile broadband coverage has significantly improved over the last six years, now covering 95% of the population. However, as the State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2021 highlights, there are still 1.1 billion people in South Asia not using mobile internet, despite being covered by a mobile broadband network. This usage gap is the highest globally at 61%."

The IMF published a paper that combes administrative data on credit, internet penetration and a land reform in Rwanda, to showsthat the complementarity between technology and law can overcome financial frictions. Leveraging quasi-experimental variation in 3G availability from lightning strikes and incidental coverage, it shows that mobile connectivity steers borrowers from microfinance to commercial banks and improves loan terms. These effects are partly due to the role of 3G internet in facilitating the acquisition of land titles from the reform, used as a collateral for bank loans and mortgages. The paper quantifies that the collateral's availability mediates 35% of the overall effect of mobile internet on credit and 80% for collateralized loans.

For many mobile is the primary - or only - way to get online. Last year alone, almost 300 million further people connected to mobile internet. The extent and progress of mobile internet connectivity is explored in detail in the GSMA's State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report.

At the heart of the design of the public Internet, is a hidden system of governance and 'permissioning' that makes it all work. The Internet is a public network with permissioning of some key resources. And the lessons we can learn from this have profound implications for the future of blockchain systems, especially in the enterprise. Open, shared, general purpose, broad access networks - public networks - tend to dominate over time. But public does not imply anarchic or permissionlessness. This article makes the case that public blockchains that take a similar approach to the internet are the ones to watch, like Corda Network, Alastria and Sovrin.

"Bitcoin is a "Money Over Internet Protocol," as is Ethereum, potentially. Just as VOIP moves voice data around the internet natively, Bitcoin and Ethereum move value data around the internet natively. Most people disparage Bitcoin, Ethereum, et al. as protocols that can't scale and can't possibly threaten the incumbent financial industry, just as they denigrated VOIP. But the scaling technology is now here - it's called the Lightning Network, which is a Bitcoin layer 2 protocol. Its throughput capacity roughly equals that of Visa, and payments made over Lightning cost virtually zero. There are other scaling technologies, too. If I'm right and scaling technologies for internet-native money protocols have arrived, then many legacy systems operating in the financial system today will be obsolete within a handful of years." (Caitlin Long)

According to a Ventures Africa poll only 4% of Nigerian respondents have used the eNaira, and 64% haven't even heard of it. Retail merchants and traders felt the same way. Plus only 30% of merchants and traders interviewed had heard of the eNaira, and none had used it. One of the factors contributing to this may be Nigeria's digital divide. According to the Alliance for Affordable Internet only 12% of Nigerians have access to 4G-like Internet speeds or the capacity to use the internet on a daily basis. Although the CBN has said that Nigerians without smartphone internet access will be able to transact in eNaira using basic featurephones, apps have been the predominant form of transaction.

The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) published its Affordability Report - an in-depth annual research initiative that represents part of A4AI's ongoing efforts to measure policy progress toward affordable internet. It calls for governments to develop effective national broadband plans to make internet access more affordable and enable more people to connect. It focuses on three steps to success when it comes to broadband plans: open consultations, clear targets, and committed funding.

The GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report 2021 highlights, so far the pandemic does not appear to have negatively impacted the overall gender gap in mobile ownership, which has remained relatively flat, nor the gender gap in mobile internet, which has improved this year - driven mostly by South Asia. Across low- and middle-income countries, 58 per cent of women now access mobile internet, with an estimated 112 million women going online for the first time in 2020. But access and use of mobile remains unequal; women are 7 per cent less likely than men to own a mobile and 15 per cent less likely to use mobile internet.

There are now more than 3.8 billion mobile internet subscribers globally, representing 49% of the world's population. However, adoption has not been equitable, with mobile internet adoption standing at 26% in Sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2019. The region accounts for almost half of the global population not covered by a mobile broadband network.

The World Bank published a report that provides evidence that demonstrates that internet availability increases jobs and reduces poverty in African countries. To fully realize their potential, digital technologies need to become more affordable and easier to use. Governments should prioritize policies and investments that increase internet coverage, foster productive internet use, and enhance skills, jobs, and earnings.

The GSMA published a comprehensive overview of the trends in global connectivity to inform progress towards closing the coverage and usage gaps and the key challenges. The report accompanies the fifth annual update of the GSMA Mobile Connectivity Index, a tool which measures the performance of 170 countries, representing 99% of the global population, against the key enablers of mobile internet adoption: infrastructure; affordability; consumer readiness; and content and services. The Index was developed as part of the mobile industry's commitment to drive mobile internet connectivity and accelerate digital inclusion.

According to the World Bank, download speeds in high-income countries increased significantly between 2019 and 2023, while speeds in lower-income countries stagnated. As of 2022, North America and East Asia have the speediest internet. This difference in broadband speeds can mainly be attributed to investment. In 2020, nearly 90% of global telecommunication investment came from East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, and North America. Meanwhile, low- and middle-income regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for less than 10% of total investment.

"There is no longer any doubt that high-altitude balloons can be used to provide cellular service to remote locations or places reeling from natural disaster. The question for Loon - an Internet-providing balloon service owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company - is whether that technology is commercially viable."

The Internet is a public network with permissioning of some key resources. And the lessons we can learn from this have profound implications for the future of blockchain systems, especially in the enterprise.

Google, Temasek and Bain & Company released the e-Conomy Southeast Asia report for 2019, highlighting the most significant industry trends observed in 2019 and analysing the current and future potential of the Southeast Asian Internet economy across its six largest markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam).

Google, Temasek and Bain & Company released their e-Conomy Southeast Asia report for 2019, highlighting the most significant industry trends observed in 2019 and analysing the current and future potential of the Southeast Asian Internet economy across its six largest markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam).

"If you consider the internet to be the equivalent to a nation state, it should have a currency native to itself, and there is not going to be any one party or institution that makes this happen, and there's not going to be any one party or institution that can stop it from happening. And having a global currency that is native to the internet will allow companies like ours to move much faster and reach a lot more people."

Tor is a protocol for using the internet privately. Tor relies on a technique called onion routing, which encrypts requests and relays them through several intermediate nodes. Tor is vulnerable to traffic analysis, but is widely used, battle-tested, and improves privacy dramatically.

The Philippine Bureau of the Treasury, UnionBank and the Philippine Digital Asset Exchange launched a blockchain-enabled mobile application for distributing government treasury bonds. The app will allow citizens to easily invest in retail treasury bonds for as little as 5,000 Philippine pesos. App users will be able to make instant payments using internet payment services such as InstaPay, GCash and Paymaya. They can also pay through internet banking or over-the-counter payment through their UnionBank accounts