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

Mon Mar 14 08:03:25 GMT 2005

It’s nothing new. Digital divide is only a subset of the many divides of the
global economy. Basically, the digital divide has been considered as a major
danger during the Internet bubble because everyone thought that the pace of
development in the most developed countries would have created a wider gap
with struggling countries.

Of course digital divide is to be considered in a systemic perspective,
together with school system, sanitation etc. But at the same time it has to
be faced as an important single issue as well: mobile and technological
convergency of the devices (it’s likely that cell phone will became soon the
main access point to the Internet) have opened another outlook in dealing
with the digital divide; we can’t consider it as we did in 2000 or 2001: now
mobile diffusion in Africa, for example, is a phenomenon to evaluate in the
decision on how investing money for development. Maybe this is the point:
where to invest in order to make those countries keep the pace? In PCs for
the schools or in mobile infrastructure? In sanitation or in ICT literacy?
The debate is open and hopefully it would be one of the task that the WSIS
will face in November: to define guidelines for the investments and to have
a common policy with clear targets.

PAOLO ZOCCHI

Unarete (Italy)

www.unarete.org <http://www.unarete.org/> 

pzocchi at unarete.org

  _____  

Da: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] Per conto
di Jean-Louis FULLSACK
Inviato: domenica 13 marzo 2005 22.44
A: plenary at wsis-cs.org; wsis; plenary at wsis-cs.org
Oggetto: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] The Economist on the 'real digital divide'

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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