In Cairo, Egypt, a protestor in Tahrir Square reads the latest news on his tablet computer. The Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions are often described as "Facebook revolutions". (Reuters/Asmah Waguih)
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In the village of Bithoor in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, children gather around an "internet classroom" on wheels. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
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Under the watchful eyes of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, a man takes advantage of wireless internet access at the Museum for Socialist Art in Sofia, Bulgaria. (Reuters/Stoyan Nenov)
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US onion farmer Bob Hale of Hermiston, Oregon, shows a client his wares in realtime from the field. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
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A "capsule inn" in Shanghai provides the very basics, plus wireless internet. (AP Photo/Xinhua Fan Xiaoming)
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An Algerian delegate checks his email during the 2012 Socialist International Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. (EPA/Nic Bothma)
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Using a laptop, football fans keep tabs on the match near the river Elbe in Hamburg, Germany. (Reuters/Christian Charisius)
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German Economics Minister Philipp Rösler and Chancellor Angela Merkel consult an iPad during a cabinet meeting in Berlin in 2012. (AP Photo/Rainer Jensen)
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Pilots should soon be able to access flight manuals and performance-calculating applications on tablets. Aircraft manufacturer Airbus began providing such technology in 2012. (Keystone/Handout Airbus)
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In Japan, you're not allowed to talk on a mobile phone while using public transport, but surfing the Web and checking email are very popular pasttimes – even on holidays. (EPA/Robert Gilhooly)
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A woman uses her phone to publish photos of a festival in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. (Reuters/Fahad Shadeed)
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Some Swiss trains provide W-Lan for travellers. (Keystone/Martin Rütschi)
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The project "One Laptop per Child" aims to provide a million children with internet access via sturdy and inexpensive laptops. Pictured here is a boy near Mumbai, India. (Reuters/Danish Siddiqui)
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Swiss photographer Denis Balibouse files his pictures under a full moon sky from Mont-Cenis Pass Road in Lanslebourg, France, during the 2011 Grande Odyssée sled dog race. (Reuters/Denis Balibouse)
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Photos and videos can be posted on the fly, websites are updated constantly and even revolutions have been attributed to wireless internet access. Getting online on the go is becoming more and more common for millions of people.
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In many remote parts of the world, it is much easier to install mobile solutions than expensive cables. This means that wireless internet service is playing an increasingly important role in everyday life – also in poor areas.
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Carrying the internet in your pocket
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The development of mobile internet access is constantly moving forward. Even exact statistics are difficult because of the rapid pace of development. “We are recording a major increase in mobile internet access,” says Carsten Roetz, a spokesman for Swisscom, the largest telecommunications company in Switzerland. “The volume of data consumed by mobile internet users is…
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Nowadays, we post pictures, videos, and blogs on the internet from wherever we are. Commuters quite naturally chat and sort through their e-mails on the train. Constant and direct availability of information not only threatens to trigger states of mind where we can’t switch off anymore, we also increasingly feel that we’re missing something when…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.