1、Building an Internet for the futurePhoto by Li-wei TungKearney,SydneyIts an essential part of modern society,and yet about a quarter of the world still doesnt have it.The Internet for tomorrow needs to provide access for all,and communication service providers can play a vital role in this.The Inter

2、net has become such a pervasive and influential presence in our lives that it is occasionally necessary to step back for a moment to get a sense of its sheer scalethough the very fact that you most likely pulled this article from the Internet shows that even as we“step back”from the network,we remai

3、n well within its gravitational pull.According to the International Telecommunication Union(ITU),4.9 billion people around the world were connected to the Internet at some point in 2021a 150 percent increase from just 2 billion in 2011.Over this same 10-year period,Internet penetration more than dou

4、bled from 30 percent to 63 percent.Total worldwide monthly bandwidth consumption increased elevenfold,from less than 25 exabytes in 2011 to more than 275 exabytes in 2021.The unit of measure being invoked here is itself a marker of the Internets vastness.An exabyte is a billion gigabytes,or a billio

5、n billion bytes.The cloud-data firm Teradata contextualizes such numbers by pointing out that all the words ever spoken by mankind amount to an estimated five exabytes.As a result of this astonishing growth,a technology that had barely entered mainstream society a quarter-century ago has arguably be

6、come the most important tool in our daily lives.The average American now spends more than four hours a day on a connected mobile device.This expansion has delivered some undeniable economic and social benefits.It has made products,services,and information universally and readily accessible around th