COMMUNICATIONS: Internet Marks North-South Telecoms Gap

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 15 2002 (IPS) - The expansion of communication information technologies continues at a rapid pace worldwide, but the gap separating rich and poor countries when it comes to Internet access continues to widen just as quickly.

The latest study by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) about this imbalance states, however, that as far as access to basic telephone systems, there are some encouraging signs.

The ITU report states that in 1991, total telephone penetration, which includes fixed lines and mobile phones, was 49 per 100 inhabitants in industrialised countries, 3.3 per 100 in emerging economies, and just 0.3 per 100 in the least-developed countries (LDCs).

Ten years later, says the document prepared for the World Telecommunication Development Conference, to begin Monday in Istanbul, the rates were 121.1 per 100 inhabitants in industrialised countries, 18.7 in developing countries, and 1.1 in the LDCs.

That period saw unprecedented growth in international telecoms networks. In the year 2000 alone, investment in infrastructure for this sector surpassed 200 billion dollars.

The telephone ratio between industrialised and developing countries went from 15 to one in 1991 to slightly more than six to one in 2001. However, the disparity between emerging nations and LDCs grew from 12:1 to 17:1 in that decade.

ITU secretary-general Yoshio Utsumi acknowledged that, “while many middle-income developing countries are making rapid progress to world-class networks, it is in the world’s poorest nations where the problems of the ‘digital divide’ are most acute.”

But the disparities do not arise as a result of the telephone networks themselves, because the pace of growth in that area in 2001 was greater in the LDCs than in the other two groups of countries.

Twenty years ago, Tokyo had more telephones than did the entire African continent, where most of the LDCs are found. But things have changed: now Africa has more than twice as many phone lines as Tokyo.

The ITU also reported that there were more mobile telephones in Bangkok than in all Africa, but Africans now have more than 20 million mobile phone users, more than the number of people living in the Thai capital.

The text, which will be the subject of discussion Mar 18-27 in Istanbul by 1,500 telecoms delegates representing government and private entities, states that at the end of 2001, 28 African countries, more than half the continent’s nations, had more mobile than fixed-line telephones, a larger portion than other regions.

But the gap is widening in terms of Internet access, which is distributed less equitably than phone access.

The disparity exists between countries of different development levels, and within a given country, between rural and urban areas, between men and women, between educated and illiterate people, and between young and older people, says the report.

The ITU concludes that the gap is the result of socio-economic disparities, and therefore does not differ greatly from other inequalities like those found in income and access to health services and education.

The basic cause of the imbalance is poverty, according to the study coordinated by Tim Kelly, head of strategy and policy at the ITU.

The less money a country’s inhabitants have, the less likely that they utilise communications technology, he said.

The ITU experts state that the Internet-related disparities do not only involve access, but also the quality of the service.

“International Internet bandwidth (or IP connectivity) is a good measure of users’ experience with the Internet. The greater the bandwidth, the quicker the response times,” says the report.

The 400,000 residents of Luxembourg work with a broader bandwidth than the 760 million inhabitants of Africa do.

Although Africa has approximately five million Internet users, many of them likely face limitations in sending and receiving a simple e-mail or navigating the web.

“The new digital divide is about quality, not just quantity,” says the ITU. High-speed Internet access is increasingly in demand throughout the industrialised world, but it is still a far-off goal for most developing countries.

Utsumi noted that “the challenge facing the upcoming World Telecommunication Development Conference is to show how sector reform, investment and capacity-building can make a genuine difference to improving the livelihoods of the world’s most deprived.”