Access to the internet is a basic human right, the United Nations declared in 2016. But, as the Covid-19 crisis has highlighted, it is a right that is still denied to billions of people at a time when connectivity has never been more important.

For professional classes in rich countries with good internet access and the ability to work from home, the crisis has been made infinitely easier thanks to Zoom video calls and Amazon deliveries. It has been a far more precarious existence for those who have manual jobs and children at home with no internet access. Across the world some 1.2bn students have been kept away from school or college.

That digital divide runs between countries. In Europe, 87 per cent of households enjoy internet access, while that figure is only 18 per cent in Africa. But it also runs between regions within countries, with remote rural and rundown urban communities often being cut off from the digital world. The Federal Communications Commission estimates that 21m people in the US still lack access to broadband, although some researchers suggest it might be twice that number. Moreover, the divide runs between generations and social classes, disadvantaging the old and the poor.