Number of internet users reaches two billion

The number of people worldwide who are using the internet has now reached two billion, according to Hamadoun Toure, head of he telecommunications agency of the United Nations.

“At the beginning of the year 2000 there were only 500 million mobile subscriptions globally and 250 million internet users,” Toure said at a press conference. “By the beginning of this year 2011 those numbers have mushroomed to over five billion mobile users and two billion subscribers to the internet,” Toure added.

The agency has used French data showing that internet users counted around the world has reached 2.08 billion at the end of 2010.

The figure means that almost one in three people are now connected to the internet. The data also shows that 57% of the users are in developing nations.