[WSIS CS-Plenary] The Economist on the 'real digital divide'

[Jean-Louis FULLSACK]

Dear Sasha
After the failed "Internet Bonanza" (just five years ago), the Economist -who was one of its its most zealous promoters-  invent the "mobile dream" for solving the digital divide. In fact, not a surprise for insiders of the industry who keep cool !
But when, among other dubious assertions, the Economist writes that "Mobile phones do not rely on a permanent electricity supply" then we are six years back when other such "key assumptions" leaded to the biggest financial crash since 1929. .
This is to say that it would be time waisting for us to question such a neoliberal journalistic crap..
Perhaps we just ask them how their handy works with an empty battery. 
Jean-Louis Fullsack
CSDPTT







> Message du 13/03/05 16:59
> De : "Sasha Costanza-Chock" 
> A : "wsis" , plenary at wsis-cs.org
> Copie à : 
> Objet : [WSIS CS-Plenary] The Economist on the 'real digital divide'
> 
> 
> Anyone have time write a good response to this? In fact they would 
> probably publish a thoughtful response letter.
> 
> sasha
> 
> 
> --
> 
> The real digital divide
> Mar 10th 2005
> From The Economist print edition
> 
> 
> Encouraging the spread of mobile phones is the most sensible and
> effective response to the digital divide
> 
> IT WAS an idea born in those far-off days of the internet bubble: the
> worry that as people in the rich world embraced new computing and
> communications technologies, people in the poor world would be left
> stranded on the wrong side of a ?digital divide?. Five years after the
> technology bubble burst, many ideas from the time?that ?eyeballs? matter
> more than profits or that internet traffic was doubling every 100
> days?have been sensibly shelved. But the idea of the digital divide
> persists. On March 14th, after years of debate, the United Nations will
> launch a ?Digital Solidarity Fund? to finance projects that address ?the
> uneven distribution and use of new information and communication
> technologies? and ?enable excluded people and countries to enter the new
> era of the information society?. Yet the debate over the digital divide
> is founded on a myth?that plugging poor countries into the internet will
> help them to become rich rapidly.
> 
> The lure of magic
> 
> This is highly unlikely, because the digital divide is not a problem in
> itself, but a symptom of deeper, more important divides: of income,
> development and literacy. Fewer people in poor countries than in rich
> ones own computers and have access to the internet simply because they
> are too poor, are illiterate, or have other more pressing concerns, such
> as food, health care and security. So even if it were possible to wave a
> magic wand and cause a computer to appear in every household on earth,
> it would not achieve very much: a computer is not useful if you have no
> food or electricity and cannot read.
> 
> Yet such wand-waving?through the construction of specific local
> infrastructure projects such as rural telecentres?is just the sort of
> thing for which the UN's new fund is intended. How the fund will be
> financed and managed will be discussed at a meeting in September. One
> popular proposal is that technology firms operating in poor countries be
> encouraged to donate 1% of their profits to the fund, in return for
> which they will be able to display a ?Digital Solidarity? logo. (Anyone
> worried about corrupt officials creaming off money will be heartened to
> hear that a system of inspections has been proposed.)
> 
> This sort of thing is the wrong way to go about addressing the
> inequality in access to digital technologies: it is treating the
> symptoms, rather than the underlying causes. The benefits of building
> rural computing centres, for example, are unclear (see the article in
> our Technology Quarterly in this issue). Rather than trying to close the
> divide for the sake of it, the more sensible goal is to determine how
> best to use technology to promote bottom-up development. And the answer
> to that question turns out to be remarkably clear: by promoting the
> spread not of PCs and the internet, but of mobile phones.
> 
> Plenty of evidence suggests that the mobile phone is the technology with
> the greatest impact on development. A new paper finds that mobile phones
> raise long-term growth rates, that their impact is twice as big in
> developing nations as in developed ones, and that an extra ten phones
> per 100 people in a typical developing country increases GDP growth by
> 0.6 percentage points (see article).
> 
> And when it comes to mobile phones, there is no need for intervention or
> funding from the UN: even the world's poorest people are already rushing
> to embrace mobile phones, because their economic benefits are so
> apparent. Mobile phones do not rely on a permanent electricity supply
> and can be used by people who cannot read or write.
> 
> Phones are widely shared and rented out by the call, for example by the
> ?telephone ladies? found in Bangladeshi villages. Farmers and fishermen
> use mobile phones to call several markets and work out where they can
> get the best price for their produce. Small businesses use them to shop
> around for supplies. Mobile phones are used to make cashless payments in
> Zambia and several other African countries. Even though the number of
> phones per 100 people in poor countries is much lower than in the
> developed world, they can have a dramatic impact: reducing transaction
> costs, broadening trade networks and reducing the need to travel, which
> is of particular value for people looking for work. Little wonder that
> people in poor countries spend a larger proportion of their income on
> telecommunications than those in rich ones.
> 
> The digital divide that really matters, then, is between those with
> access to a mobile network and those without. The good news is that the
> gap is closing fast. The UN has set a goal of 50% access by 2015, but a
> new report from the World Bank notes that 77% of the world's population
> already lives within range of a mobile network.
> 
> And yet more can be done to promote the diffusion of mobile phones.
> Instead of messing around with telecentres and infrastructure projects
> of dubious merit, the best thing governments in the developing world can
> do is to liberalise their telecoms markets, doing away with lumbering
> state monopolies and encouraging competition. History shows that the
> earlier competition is introduced, the faster mobile phones start to
> spread. Consider the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, for
> example. Both have average annual incomes of a mere $100 per person, but
> the number of phones per 100 people is two in the former (where there
> are six mobile networks), and 0.13 in the latter (where there is only one).
> 
> Let a thousand networks bloom
> 
> According to the World Bank, the private sector invested $230 billion in
> telecommunications infrastructure in the developing world between 1993
> and 2003?and countries with well-regulated competitive markets have seen
> the greatest investment. Several firms, such as Orascom Telecom (see
> article) and Vodacom, specialise in providing mobile access in
> developing countries. Handset-makers, meanwhile, are racing to develop
> cheap handsets for new markets in the developing world. Rather than
> trying to close the digital divide through top-down IT infrastructure
> projects, governments in the developing world should open their telecoms
> markets. Then firms and customers, on their own and even in the poorest
> countries, will close the divide themselves.
> 
> 
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