Geneva, Switzerland: More than a third of the world's population is online while mobile phone uptake increased by more than 600 million in 2011 to around six billion, according to a UN agency.

But the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) highlighted huge disparities in the cost of services, with the poorer parts of the world tending to pay the most.

More connected ... a third of the world's population now has the internet.

"On the back of the increase in broadband services worldwide, the number of people using the internet grew by 11 per cent over the past year ... i.e., 2.3 billion people," the ITU said in its 2012 report on information and communication technologies (ICT).