Staff Correspondent:

52% of households in Bangladesh have access to the internet at the end of December, up from 50.4% three months earlier, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).

The latest quarterly “ICT Access and Use Survey” by the government’s statistics arm reveals that in the last three months of 2024, internet access among rural households rose from 46% to 48.2%, while urban household access increased from 60.2% to 61.6%.

The scenario is better from 2023, when less than 44% of families had internet access.

The proportion of individuals using the internet reveals a wider urban-rural gap, with less than 38% of rural residents accessing the internet compared to over 68% in urban areas. Nationally, internet usage rose to 47.2% in December 2024, up from 45.7% in September.

The survey revealed that 98.7% of families have mobile phones in Bangladesh, including 72% of families having at least one smartphone.

63.6% of families have a television, while only 9.2% of households have a computer.

Individually, only 9% of the population use computers, while over 90% use mobile phones, and 65% personally own one.

Although 52% of households have internet access, only 47.2% of the population actually uses it.

The majority of internet users access the internet at least once a day.