The countries that have the lowest Internet access rates include Myanmar and East Timor, where only about 0.1 percent of the population has Internet access; Sierra Leone, where about 0.2 percent of the population does; and Bangladesh, the Central African Republic, Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the Internet access rate is about 0.3 percent. An Internet access rate is often described as an Internet penetration rate (IPR). More than 120 countries have an IPR of less than 23.8 percent.
More facts about countries' IPRs:
- As of 2010, the world average IPR was about 28.8 percent. The United States had an IPR of about 77 percent.
- Other countries that had IPRs of less than 1 percent included Burkina Faso and Cambodia, each with an IPR of 0.5 percent. Afghanistan, Benin, Mauritania and Turkmenistan also had very low IPRs — 1.5 percent, 1.8 percent, 1.0 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively.
- Cuban official documents say that the country has an IPR of about 16 percent, but it's thought that the country's true IPR is closer to 1 to 3 percent.
- The countries that have the highest IPR include the Falkland Islands, Iceland and Norway, with IPRs of 100 percent, 93.2 percent and 90.9 percent, respectively.