2.2.2.1.1 Internet use

While the Asia and Pacific region accounts for 60% of the world's population, it currently has only about a quarter of the world's Internet users. This relatively low degree of Internet penetration, however, is changing very rapidly as the Internet grows quickly in such large populated countries as China, India and Indonesia (see Appendix 1).

Internet penetration in the Asia and Pacific region varies widely across national boundaries. Over the last three years, South Korea, as one example, has become the world's leading nation for broadband services, with over 6 million subscribers and a penetration of DSL and cable modem service of more than 30% of households. Australia, too, has been a leading Internet nation since the early 1990s. For its part, Japan has a well-developed wired Internet market, but is also known for mobile Internet usage, with 40.4 million mobile Internet subscribers as of June 2001.

At the other end of the Internet development scale, Internet connectivity in countries such as Laos and Vietnam is currently very low. According to the most recent Internet Software Consortium/Network Wizards Internet Domain Survey, the Vietnamese domain was carried on just 179 hosts connected to the Internet. The Japanese domain, by comparison, had 4,640,863.

2.2.1.4 Conclusions and Assessment

2.2.2.1.2 Electoral systems and traditions