The Internet Will Reach a Billion More People in Four Years

The internet's fast growth pace isn't poised to slow down any over the next four years, a projection released by the Boston Consulting Group suggests. According to their research, the internet economy is expected to double by 2016, from just over $2 trillion in 2010 to more than $4 trillion.

Driving the growing economy is a continued rise in users. In 2010, 1.9 billion people used the internet. By 2016, this number will swell to 3 billion, or nearly half of the world's population, BCG believes.

“No company or country can afford to ignore this development. Every business needs to go digital,” Boston Consulting partner David Dean said in a statement today. “The ‘new’ Internet is no longer largely Western, accessed from your PC. It is now global, ubiquitous, and participatory.”

Reinforcing Boston's predictions is a report from Ericsson, which estimates that there will be 5 billion mobile data subscribers by 2016.