Thanks to the biggest global economic slowdown since the "Great Depression" of the 1929, few may like to look back at 2008. For global ICT however, 2008 was a year when it achieved a few significant milestones. Mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide crossed the 4 billion -- translating into a penetration rate of over 60 percent -- while almost a quarter of the world's 6.7 billion people were able to hook up to the Internet.
Yet despite this high growth rates, record subscription numbers, and all-time high penetration rates-achieved particularly over the last five years, ICT failed to achieve one of its most important objectives; Bridging the digital divide.
According to the ITU's latest ICT Development Index-released today, although ICT has seen significant improvements in the developing world, both in terms of technology as well as adoption, the gap between the ICT haves and have-nots has hardly been bridged in the last 5 years.
"The developing countries the world over have made a lot of progress in terms of ICT access and are very dynamic as well in terms of ICT development," says Susan Teltscher, Head, Market Information and Statistics Division, ITU. "But despite their efforts, because the developing countries have not been able to keep pace with the development of ICT in developed countries, there's still a significant divide between the countries with very high ICT levels and countries with very low ICT levels."
Susan adds that even as developing countries have taken rapid strides in making mobile phones ubiquitous, an area where most developing countries have failed to match up with their develop counterparts is the broadband penetration.
While the number of estimated Internet users worldwide continues to grow rapidly -- by the end of 2007 an average of one out of five people were online -- penetration levels in the developing world remain low, at around 13 per cent.
As an instance, take the case of Africa. Amongst the developing regions, Africa continues to have the highest mobile growth rate, as mobile penetration rose from just one in 50 people at the beginning of this century to over one fourth of the population last year.
Yet Africa features among the lowest (with values of 0.82 to 2.03) in the ITU Development Index because less than 5 per cent of the population use the Internet, compared to less than 15 percent in Asia, and 43 and 44 percent in Europe and the Americas respectively.
"ITU has repeatedly highlighted the importance of broadband for development," says the report entitled Measuring the Information Society: The ICT Development Index 2009. "[However}, with limited availability of fixed networks in many developing countries, where wired access is often restricted to major urban centers," people find it difficult to get fixed broadband access.
The other stumbling block in bridging the gap is the scarcity of local content. For example, in many African low-developed countries, English, French or Portuguese is either the mother tongue or widely spoken. And there is hardly any local content availed in indigenous languages.
The lack of international bandwidth also poses a significant barrier to developing countries' ability to participate in ICT-enabled activities.
"Today's information society is a global one where individuals must be able to interact and exchange knowledge and know-how globally. Also, in the absence of national or regional Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), international Internet bandwidth is used/ needed for domestic traffic, to transport data from users within the same country," says the report.
The Report has found that all countries (except one) have improved their ICT levels during the past five years, but some much more than others. Notably, Eastern Europe not only features high relative growth but also one of the highest IDI value gains and can thus be considered as the most dynamic region on ICT developments during this time period. Countries that were driving this process include the Baltic States and Romania. Other economies that have significantly improved their ICT levels are Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Macao (China), Japan, Italy and France.
The most advanced countries in ICT however, are from Northern Europe with the exception of Republic of Korea. Sweden tops the new ITU ICT Development Index, followed by the Republic of Korea, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway.
They are followed by other, mainly high-income countries from Europe, Asia and North America. But interestingly although gaining on both the access and the usage sub-indices, the United States has not yet reached the same high ICT penetration levels as several European countries. In fact United States is down six places, ranking 17th in the index.
Poor countries, in particular the least developed countries, remain at the lower end of the index with limited access to ICT infrastructure, including fixed and mobile telephony, Internet and broadband
A notable feature in this year's IDI is that it has included a new measure called ITU IC Price Basket that analyzed the prices for ICT services in each country.
And the revelation is; prices vary greatly between countries, not only in absolute terms (i.e. US$) but also when they are adjusted to purchasing power parity (PPP), and when they are presented as a percentage of Gross National Income per capita.
"The results of that analysis are interesting," says Susan. "We found that high-income, developed countries have lower relative prices for ICT services (as a percentage of GNI per capita), whereas low-income, developing economies tend to have higher prices, which increases the rift in the digital divide globally."
Photo: A classroom in India - World Bank Photo Collection/ Curt Carnemark . Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic
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