Access rose from 78.2% to 91.6% between 2000 and 2023. I derived the people-without-access line as WDI population × (1 − access rate); it falls from about 1.34B to 677M, even as the world population grew. These are annual estimates, not live counters.
I built GlobalDataTracker.com , a free country-stat explorer. Does the paired view make clear how the access rate improved while a large absolute gap remains?