Some 2.9 billion people - 37 percent of the world’s population - have still never used the internet, the United Nations said, despite the COVID-19 pandemic driving people online.

The UN’s International Telecommunication Union estimated that 96 percent of those 2.9 billion live in developing countries.

The agency said the estimated number of people who have gone online rose from 4.1 billion in 2019 to 4.9 billion this year, partially due to a “COVID connectivity boost.”

But even among those internet users, many hundreds of millions might only go online infrequently, using shared devices or facing connection speeds that hamper their internet use.

The number of users globally grew by more than 10 percent in the first year of the COVID crisis - by far the largest annual increase in a decade. (AFP)