The impact of Information Communications Technology (ICT), especially the Internet and mobile phones, on the poor is of increasing concern within the development community. Recent empirical studies suggest the impact of ICT is 'Janus faced' — in some cases emergent ICTs create new opportunities for the poor, while in others they seem to exacerbate the challenges the poor face (Kenny 2006; Huerta, Esperanza, and Sandoval-Almazan 2007; Hanson 2008). Growing literature on the digital divide purports debilitating effects on the poor caused by lack of access to information, leading to social, political and economic exclusion. Recently, the framework of human rights has been increasingly employed in the call for Internet access to be formally considered a human right. This emerging framework is almost exclusively in the domain of political rights, usually claimed under the right to information in the UDHR. Yet, I argue that access to the Internet should especially be conceptualized as an instrumental economic right. This is because the Internet is increasingly instrumental to the provision of basic economic rights, especially the right to work. No published academic studies have put forth such a theoretical claim. Thus, this paper attempts to fill that void by: (1) investigating where the ICT and development literature, especially studies addressing the Internet, and the economic rights literature can be brought closer together; (2) a practical explanation of the impact that a lack of Internet access has on economic, political, and social exclusion; and an exploration of how great disparities of Internet access lowers equality of opportunity in the realm of work, particularly affecting the right to work; (3) a theoretical case for why Internet access can now be conceptualized as an instrumental economic right; (4) I conclude by identifying potentially productive avenues for theoretical and practical research in this emerging inquiry. Also, the primary theoretical explanatory example provided in this paper to is the right to work, as codified in the ICESCR. Finally, nowhere in the ICESCR is it stated that access to the Internet, is an economic right of any kind. Despite the current omission in codified human rights, I argue that in the modern world, access to the Internet should be considered an instrumental economic right.