As global internet expansion slows and infrastructure shortfalls persist, the latest findings from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) offer a sobering assessment. Published at the close of the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC-25) in Baku, the Global Connectivity Report 2025 documents a shift: the era of easy, organic network growth is drawing to a close. Although roughly 74 percent of the world is now online, growth has flattened and the remaining gaps are structural rather than merely a matter of connecting new users.
The challenge today is no longer only about getting people onto the internet; it is about ensuring enterprise operations can run reliably on networks that often lack the resilience demanded by modern cloud-native workloads. With an estimated 2.2 billion people still offline, ITU Member States adopted the Baku Action Plan—a four-year roadmap through 2029 that aims to address these persistent divides.
The report emphasizes a more useful metric for businesses: “universal and meaningful connectivity” (UMC). UMC recognizes that basic or intermittent connectivity—such as a weak 3G signal—is inadequate for many enterprise applications. For example, a fragile mobile link is functionally irrelevant to a supply chain manager who needs real-time logistics visibility. The data show that while basic coverage is high, the robust infrastructure required for enterprise-grade services remains thin and unevenly distributed.
Navigating enterprise infrastructure risks across fibre, subsea cables, and satellite networks
Mobile access may appear widespread, but the fibre backbone needed to backhaul and aggregate traffic is often sparse. As of 2023, only about 32 percent of the global population lived within 10 kilometres of a fibre-optic node, according to the ITU. Even where fibre is relatively nearby, last-mile connections frequently fall short, leaving local networks unable to deliver the bandwidth and latency performance required for edge-to-cloud workloads.
This physical gap poses headaches for executives deploying edge computing in emerging markets: devices and sensors can generate data at the edge, but that data cannot always be reliably transported back to centralized or cloud compute resources. 5G amplifies this divide. While 5G coverage now reaches approximately 55 percent of the global population, deployment is heavily concentrated. Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas see coverage rates roughly between 60 and 74 percent, while other regions lag at single-digit to low-teen percentages. The result is a tiered digital map where industrial automation may function smoothly in Frankfurt yet fail in Lagos.
Undersea infrastructure presents its own vulnerabilities. Subsea cables carry more than 99 percent of international data traffic, and much of this network is now financed and secured by hyperscale cloud and content providers seeking control over their supply chains. Yet subsea cables suffer frequent faults—on average about four breaks weekly—most commonly caused by fishing trawlers or ships dragging anchors. Repair timelines are long, often ranging from two weeks to several months, impeded by permitting processes, cabotage laws that restrict foreign repair vessels, and complex coastal jurisdictional issues.
An International Advisory Body on Submarine Cable Resilience, launched in 2024, seeks to improve coordination and reduce diplomatic friction around repairs, but currently redundancy is the primary defense for business continuity. Organisations must plan for outages and route diversity, because swift, reliable repair remains the exception rather than the rule.
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations have emerged as a fashionable hedge against terrestrial infrastructure failures and added roughly 1.1 million subscriptions in 2024. Still, global penetration remains minimal—well under one subscription per 1,000 inhabitants in most regions. Satellites can be a lifeline for remote mines, maritime operations, or isolated schools, but they are not replacing terrestrial fibre for mainstream enterprise connectivity. Addressing the human element of non-terrestrial systems, WTDC included a training agreement with satellite operator Intersputnik to prepare 300 specialists in the Commonwealth of Independent States for maintaining and operating satellite-based networks.
Overcoming global connectivity affordability barriers and the digital skills gap in emerging markets
Affordability has improved: entry-level mobile broadband costs about half of what it did in purchasing power parity terms in 2013. However, lower prices have not erased affordability barriers for the poorest households. In many low-income countries, a basic mobile plan consumes nearly 10 percent of average monthly income, and for the bottom 40 percent of earners that share can rise to roughly 20 percent. These costs effectively cap the addressable market for digital services and limit the economic inclusion that connectivity promises.
Beyond price, a substantial digital skills gap reduces the value of connectivity. The ITU finds a pronounced urban-rural divide in technical competence: while many people can use messaging and social apps, fewer have the skills to troubleshoot, build, or develop digital services. That shortfall constrains returns on investment for businesses seeking to deploy digital solutions at scale.
WTDC endorsed targeted interventions to close these gaps. Examples include a partnership with Senegal’s regulatory authority to upskill female entrepreneurs in digital trade and a program with Australia’s infrastructure department focused on bolstering digital capabilities in rural Asia-Pacific communities. For global employers, these initiatives imply that local talent pools may require substantial corporate training and capacity-building to support enterprise deployments.
Leveraging regulatory frameworks to inform enterprise connectivity strategy
Regulation matters for future infrastructure reliability. ITU analysis shows that countries with converged licensing regimes and mandatory infrastructure-sharing policies tend to have markedly higher 5G coverage—about 40 percentage points more—than countries without such frameworks. For executives assessing market risk, regulatory maturity is a practical proxy: independent regulators, clear spectrum-trading rules, and policies that encourage infrastructure sharing correlate with faster and broader network upgrades.
The Baku Action Plan explicitly calls for regulatory frameworks that “pave the way for industry and private sector to invest,” signaling recognition that public funding alone cannot close the remaining gaps. Markets that foster competition, streamline permitting, and enable efficient spectrum use will likely attract the private-sector investment needed to harden networks and expand meaningful connectivity.
The easy growth phase of the internet is over. What follows is a prolonged, technically demanding effort to harden infrastructure, expand fibre and last-mile access, build redundancy in subsea and terrestrial links, and deepen local digital skills. These realities create a fractured global map where multinational strategies must be calibrated at a hyper-local level. Connectivity can no longer be treated as a uniform, low-risk utility; it is an operational variable that influences costs, availability, and resilience.
Operational costs rise where grid reliability is poor and diesel generators are common, while restrictive cabotage and slow permitting extend downtime for critical repairs. To accelerate the transition to meaningful global connectivity, the private sector must engage with policymakers to promote infrastructure sharing, spectrum efficiency, and regulatory reforms that enable rapid deployment and maintenance. Without stronger digital foundations, the next generation of enterprise applications will struggle to deliver promised benefits across many parts of the world.
See also: How fragmented regulation stifles mobile security innovation
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