The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2025: Coverage, Gaps & Opportunities

🌍 Introduction: why 2025 matters

The digital landscape has evolved rapidly over the last decade. In 2025, mobile internet is no longer a niche: for billions, it is the gateway to information, services, commerce, banking, health and social interaction. But despite major progress, connectivity remains deeply uneven. The 2025 edition of The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity offers a fresh — and sobering — snapshot of where we stand globally, and what it will take to turn “mobile-internet available” into “mobile-internet meaningful for all.”

This article summarises the key findings of the 2025 report and explores the main opportunities and challenges in mobile internet adoption, with a view to implications for businesses, operators, policymakers — and platforms like esimware working at the interface of connectivity and digital services.

📈 Key figures: Where we are in 2025

• 58% of the world’s population now use mobile internet on a personal device.

• 54% of the global population own a smartphone.

• Each year, more people come online: in 2024 alone around 200 million new mobile internet users were added.

• Despite that, a large “usage gap” remains: about 38% of the world population live within mobile broadband coverage but do not use the service.

• A smaller “coverage gap” remains: around 4% of the world population (≈ ~300 million people) live outside any mobile broadband coverage. 

• The vast majority (≈ 93%) of the unconnected live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

These statistics show that mobile infrastructure has reached a global scale, but having a network is not enough if people do not or cannot use it.

Sources: GSMA

🔎 Beyond coverage — The concept of “Meaningful Connectivity”

A key shift in the 2025 report is the emphasis on not only coverage, but also “meaningful connectivity” — meaning that having access is only the first step: what matters is whether users can meaningfully use the internet in a safe, affordable, enriching, and productive way.

In practice, meaningful connectivity depends on multiple factors beyond infrastructure:

• Affordability — both of data and devices (smartphones)

• Digital literacy & skills — ability to navigate, search, engage online

• Safety and trust — security, privacy, safe use, especially for vulnerable populations

• Relevant local content & services — services that make sense in users’ context, language, culture

Thus closing the “usage gap” requires much more than deploying towers; it calls for coordinated action across operators, governments, civil society, and private sector.

Sources: GSMA

🚧 Main Barriers to Adoption & Use

The 2025 report identifies several recurring barriers to both adoption (i.e. connecting) and regular usage. The major ones:

• Device affordability: many people live in regions where even an entry-level handset or a smartphone is expensive relative to income. GSMA notably points out that a device costing around US $30 could make mobile internet affordable to up to 1.6 billion people currently excluded.

• Digital skills & literacy: lack of familiarity with smartphones / internet usage deters adoption, especially among older people or in rural areas.

• Safety, trust & user experience: concerns about privacy, security, or relevancy of content — and perception of poor value — discourage many who have coverage from going online.

• Affordability of data/services: beyond just buying a device, the ongoing cost of data or mobile services (or lack of low-cost data plans) remains a major barrier.

The result: the “usage gap” (people covered but not using mobile internet) is far larger than the “coverage gap.”

Sources: GSMA

📶 Infrastructure & 5G: Progress, But Not a Silver Bullet

The 2025 report highlights that network infrastructure continues to expand: more people, including in previously underserved regions, now have access to 4G or 5G broadband.

For example: by end 2024, coverage of next-gen mobile broadband (including 5G) had reached 54% of the world’s population, translating to around 4.4 billion people globally.

Yet, network coverage alone is failing to bridge the divide. As the report, and follow-up analyses, underscore, many people remain offline despite coverage.

In other words: 5G infrastructure expands the potential reach, but uptake depends on non-infrastructure factors such as affordability, device accessibility, and digital inclusion efforts.

💡 What This Means for Stakeholders (Operators, Policymakers, Businesses, Platforms)

• For operators / telecom players: expanding coverage remains important — but growth strategies must combine infrastructure with affordable-device offers, low-cost data plans, and targeted customer education.

• For policymakers & regulators: bridging the usage gap requires enabling affordable access (e.g. subsidies or tax incentives for low-cost devices), investing in digital literacy programs, and ensuring regulation that protects user privacy and security.

• For businesses and digital-services platforms: the growing base of mobile-internet users represents a massive opportunity. But success depends on delivering services that are affordable, relevant, localized, and that consider constraints of users (device quality, data costs, connectivity reliability).

• For social impact / development actors: promoting “meaningful connectivity” should be a multi-dimensional effort — connecting infrastructure, device access, literacy, trust, and locally relevant content — to truly include underserved communities.

🌐 The Road Ahead: Why 2025 Should Be a Wake-Up Call

The 2025 findings show that the “low-hanging fruit” — deploying mobile broadband networks — is more and more harvested. But closing the digital divide now depends on addressing the deeper, harder challenges: affordability, inclusion, literacy, trust and content relevance.

If nothing changes, expanding 5G or 4G coverage alone will not shrink the massive usage gap: the gap between “having access” and “actually being connected.” That’s why digital-inclusion strategies must become central to both telecom policy and business models.

On the flip side: there’s huge potential. Bringing even part of the 1.6-billion “device-price-barriered” people online could dramatically expand global digital markets, unlock social and economic inclusion, and redefine markets — especially in emerging economies.

For companies like esimware, this context reinforces the importance of designing solutions adapted to affordability, device constraints, and real-world user needs — not just “latest-tech” but inclusive-by-design.