GSMA publishes global connectivity scores

Global mobile operator trade association the GSMA has published a Mobile Connectivity Index, which rates pretty almost country in the world according to mobile internet adoption.

The interactive online tool ranks each country on a 0-100 scale which is the average of four sub-categories: quality of infrastructure, affordability of services and devices, consumer readiness for the mobile internet and the availability of locally relevant content.

As you would expect developed economies lead the way with Australia top on 84.7, the US on 82.6 and the UK on 81.7. Bottom of the list is Niger on 15.1 followed by a bunch of other African countries.

“Already more than 3 billion people worldwide are accessing the internet via mobile, but this still leaves more than 4 billion people offline and excluded from the powerful opportunities for social and economic development that the mobile internet enables,” said Mats Granryd, Director General of the GSMA. “Mobile is the primary enabler of connectivity in developing world markets where the high cost of deploying fixed-line networks means that internet penetration is low.”

You can see the index here. The countries jump out of the screen in a gratifying way when you move your pointer over them and yield their main score. A simple click not only serves up the sub-category scores but offer some other key connectivity and demographic data. Clicking through on the country analysis offers a further drill-down into how each sub-score was calculated.