Which countries have the highest proportion of internet users?

Jul 22, 2015

Paul Muggeridge

Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

Iceland has the largest percentage of its population using the internet of any country in the world, according to figures from the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2015.

The report’s Networked Readiness Index ranks 143 economies on a variety of measures related to how much they are using information and communications technologies to drive economic development and growth.

In Iceland, 96.5% of the population are online, ahead of the Norwegians who are in second place at 95.1%.

The only non-European countries to make it into the top 10 are Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, in eighth and tenth place respectively.

The data is taken from the ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database 2014 from the International Telecommunication Union, the UN agency responsible for global issues concerning information and communication technologies.

To keep up with the Agenda subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Author: Paul Muggeridge is Head of Content at Formative Content.

Image: People use computers at an Internet cafe in Changzhi, north China’s Shanxi province. REUTERS/Stringer

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.