Survey: A billion people now have access to the Internet

More than one billion people in the world have access to the Internet, with a quarter of them with broadband, a survey quoted by AFP said.

The report by the firm eMarketer said the milestone of one billion was reached in late 2005, and that nearly 250 million households had broadband connections.

The firm estimated that of these people, 845 million used the Internet regularly, the report said.

The US was still No. 1 in terms of numbers of Internet users with 175 million, and broadband households with 43.7 million.

In terms of regions, however, Asia-Pacific had the largest number with 315 million, and was the largest broadband center containing nearly 40% of the world's broadband households, the report said.

Latin America was the fastest growing broadband region worldwide, achieving 70% subscriber growth, the survey found. But it had just 70 million people online. Europe had 233 million people online and 55.2 million broadband households. China had 111 million users and 34.1 million households with fast connections.