Facts and figures 

ICT statistics and infrastructure indicators worldwide and in Asia

Growth in the number of users of PCs and the Internet

• 43.6 million Asian users online presently
• 228 million Internet users in Asia by 2005
• 370 million Internet users in Asia by 2006
• By 2005, 37.5% of all users in Asia will be Chinese (87.5 million users)
• Business Internet use worldwide will grow by 6400% (64 times) in volume in 2003 compared to 1996

Growth in bandwidth

Via direct (point to point) fiber connections. Hubs to benefit: Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea

Growth in content

• Presently, most content is in English, but this is changing
• In China, there is growth in the use of English by Internet users
• English language content will slow compared to content in other languages (Chinese, etc.)

Growth in applications and services

• Application service providers will become more and more important
• Best example is e-commerce: to grow to > $ 1.2 trillion by 2003

Growth in e-commerce and business to business applications

• Online Banking in Asia Set to Boom
• $ 500 million of goods/services sold online in Malaysia in 1999
• 500% growth projected in 3 years

Growth in other ICTs: radio, television, telephony

• When fiber and other high bandwidth IP networks are in place, it is predicted that these will replace all communication media over the coming 5-7 years
• In the year 2000, the volume of traffic over IP networks will be equal to the volume of all traffic over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) in 2000

Growth in wireless services

• The number of cellular subscriptions worldwide will grow from 470 million at the beginning of 2000 … and will reach over 1 billion by the beginning of 2004 (Ovum Dec. 1999)
• Total cellular revenues worldwide will increase from $300 billion at the end of 1999 to $462 billion by the end of 2001, and 601 billion by the end of 2003 (Ovum Dec. 99)
• There will be 48 million worldwide smart phones (cell phones equipped with microbrowsers) users by 2002 and 204 million by 2005. Ovum, Sept 1999 Quoted From WSJ 9/20/99: "First Voice, Now Data"
• In 2005, there will be about one billion mobile phone subscribers, and a substantial portion of the phones sold that year will have multimedia capabilities.