The United Nations Broadband Commission, an arm of the United Nations has said that growth in the number of people with access to the Internet is slowing, and that more than half the world’s population is still offline.

According to UN, Internet access in rich economies is reaching saturation levels but 90 per cent of people in the 48 poorest countries have none.

The body said the access growth rate is expected to slow to 8.1 per cent this year, down from 8.6 per cent in 2014. Until 2012, growth rates had been in double digits for years.“We have reached a transition point in the growth of the Internet,” the UN report said.

The commission, set up in 2010 by the International Telecommunication Union and UNESCO, the U.N. scientific and cultural agency, said the milestone of four billion Internet users was unlikely to be passed before 2020.

Read More: ngrguardiannews