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Comment by caddybox | Hacker News Reader

I see this headline as 63% of the world now uses the internet in some shape or form. Irrespective of whether they know this or not, any threats to this vast communication network will affect their lives in some shape or form. A large part of the world has started to treat internet as a utility and the disruption of this utility has implications for people irrespective of how it's structured, managed or made available.

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The Network is a utility. Historically the previous two iterations of the Network were treated that way, the Universal Postal Union and the Public Switched Telephone Network.

It's true that it's possible to live without access to the Network, people did up until the Treaty of Bern (in 1874) - it is also possible to live without access to electricity, or fresh water and people did that too, they're still utilities.

I read it differently - 63% of people when asked will say that they directly use the internet. Most of the data seems to come from surveys, and some of the data notes seem to mention stuff around households being asked.

Im not sure a person using an internet connected ATM would count, or a person who uses the internet in some form at work but does not have a broadband connection at home etc

If you count indirect usage, I suspect the figure is much higher - ie do we really believe that c13% of Europe manages to get through a month without using the internet in any form? I’m a bit sceptical on this data as it appears to be poorly explained in terms of methodology (and some is even just forecast through a model).

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