According to Cerf, only one in six people on the planet have access to the Internet. With 1.1 billion people online and 2.5 billion people using mobile phones, Cerf said the future of the Internet is in the hands of cellphone users as next-generation devices come with Internet-enabled technology.
“There are an enormous number of applications available on mobiles,” Cerf said. “[But] you will get those other 5.5 billion people only when affordability increases and the cost of communication goes down. The mobile phone has become an important factor in the Internet revolution.”
One advantage Cerf said mobile has over computers is price, especially for users in developing countries such as China and India — the No. 1 and No. 2 most populous nations, respectively.
In India, where Cerf visited Google’s research and development facility, the mobile market is growing by close to 6 million users per month.
Less than 4 percent of Indians — about 40 million people — access the Internet using computers.
Last week, British telecom giant Vodafone Group won a bidding war for a controlling stake in India’s fourth largest mobile phone carrier — Hutchinson Telecommunications International. The deal, which analysts called a boon for Vodafone, cost the firm $11.1 billion for 16 percent of the booming Indian market.
Vodafone’s entry into the Indian market is expected to increase competition and further drop prices on mobile devices, something Cerf said will lead to greater numbers of Indians using cellphones to go online.
In the meantime, Cerf also took the opportunity to respond to critics of the Internet who say that cyberspace is rife with crime and vice.
Cerf called the Internet a mirror of the population who uses it and said that what exists in the world exists online and vice versa.