Some refer to it as the information superhighway of unlimited opportunities. Prominent among this is the notion of the whole world as a 'global village' meaning instant communication with any part of the world. The academic community has not been left out. This has been attended to include 'Virtual Faculty' and 'Virtual Students'. Evidently, the potential or the Internet is enormous.
Current statistics tend to give a gleam picture.
It is estimated that half of world's population still lacks the most basic telecommunications services. One third of the world's population has never made a telephone call. Getting to some specifics, it is also believed that most of these 'deprived population' live in the developing countries and in rural areas. These statistics led one author and Internet expert to observe that 'global information infrastructure twithout developing countries is not global'. In the content of present discussion, these may be described as people working or living where circumstances, location, or economics deprive them of any form of connection to the world's telecommunications networks.