Bridging the global digital divide – a costly mistake?

Citation

Blackman, C. (2002), "Bridging the global digital divide – a costly mistake?", info, Vol. 4 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/info.2002.27204caa.001

Bridging the global digital divide – a costly mistake?

Bridging the global digital divide – a costly mistake?

While the world's advanced economies grapple with the problems of extending broadband access, the developing world has yet to reach first base. In this issue of info, several related articles consider the issues facing developing countries with regard to IP connectivity, access to basic communications in rural areas and the "digital divide".

Claudia Sarrocco presents the findings from a recent ITU study on Internet connectivity in the least developed countries (LDCs). Although global connectivity is growing dramatically, the digital divide between industrialized and non-industrialized countries is widening. The least developed countries account for nearly 10 per cent of the world's population, but are home to only about 0.16 per cent of Internet users. New Zealand has more Internet users than all 49 LDCs combined. Tiny Luxembourg has more international Internet bandwidth than the whole of Africa. It is clear that the benefits of ICTs remain virtually unknown for a large part of the world's population – in particular for LDCs, which are at risk of being left out of the global information society. According to Sarrocco, the two major obstacles to Internet diffusion are unreliable infrastructure and high costs of Internet services. These two factors are interrelated, and, along with other factors, reinforce a vicious circle leading to market failure. However, Sarrocco believes that it is possible to transform the vicious circle into a virtuous one by establishing a reliable infrastructure that can provide access to international Internet capacity at low cost:

By establishing a reliable infrastructure that can provide access to international Internet capacity at low cost, part of the circle can be modified in a way that will have an impact throughout the entire Internet market, thereby transforming a market failure into new opportunities for development.

The initial contribution through an internationally funded project and the establishment of a particularly low price for Internet access should boost Internet development and diffusion in the countries involved. Financing connectivity could therefore be the first step towards creating a virtuous Internet circle in LDCs.

But not everyone is convinced that such an approach to extending IP connectivity, no matter how worthy, is the most sensible way forward for LDCs. Charles Kenny, for instance, wonders whether we should be trying to bridge the global digital divide at all. He argues that:

… the poor in LDCs face many "divides". The education divide, the healthcare divide, the automobile divide. That the poor have less of goods traded in a market should come as no surprise – after all, that is what being poor means. The relevant question for the poorest is, does the lack of access to a particular good provide a significant barrier to becoming more wealthy. I would argue that the answer to this question is "yes" for tools of communication in general, but likely to be "no" for the Internet in particular.

Kenny believes that, at present, the Internet is an unsuitable technology for poor people in LDCs. It is expensive and requires language, literacy and technical skills that the majority of the poor do not possess. Moreover, even if these problems could be overcome, the benefits of Internet access are likely to be relatively small. Other communications technologies, already more widespread, with less demanding capital and educational requirements, are likely to be more suitable for exploitation. Perhaps the case of Chile holds some lessons for the least developed countries. Björn Wellenius reports on the success of Chile's Telecommunications Development Fund in stimulating additional private investment in payphone service in rural areas with low income and low telephone density. Following successful sector reforms, the fund reduced the gap in rural access telephone service by an order of magnitude in five years. What's more, these efforts were funded primarily by the private sector, catalysed by minuscule amounts of public money. Wellenius shows the validity of the Chilean model for extending basic communication service throughout the population of a developing economy: remove impediments from effective working of the market, then mobilize additional investments through the market.

Having said that, Chile has plans to extend the fund from basic communications to the Internet and other advanced information and communication services. Wellenius, however, is not convinced because "it means that the government is now getting into the business of leading new markets rather than supplementing a mature market. There are benefits to this, but surely the risks of getting it wrong are great, as are the costs." Although extending IP interconnectivity in LDCs is appealing and fashionable, we should remember that half of the world's population live in rural areas, and most of them do not yet have access to basic communication services.

Colin Blackman