By Riaz K. Tayob
While the rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) around the world, especially mobile phones, is beating the expectations of most experts, there is a widening gap between the developed and developing worlds in the availability of broadband Internet access, and greater efforts are needed to narrow the divide, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
A person in a developed country is eight times more likely to be a broadband user than someone in a developing country, UNCTAD said in its “Information Economy Report 2009” released Thursday.
In a preface to the report, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said: “There is still a long way to go before we can claim to have significantly narrowed the digital divide’ to achieve an information society for all. Wide gaps in ICT infrastructure remain, not least in the case of broadband networks.”
While the digital inequality is shrinking, the gap varies by type of information and communication technology. Comparing the diffusion of the different ICTs with the distribution of income in the world shows that mobile telephony (cellular phones) has become the most equitably distributed ICT. At the end of 2008, there were about 4 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide.
(According to data released recently by the International Telecommunications Union, the number of mobile subscriptions is estimated to rise to 4.6 billion subscriptions globally by the end of 2009.)
On average, there are 60 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, the UNCTAD report states. Developing countries account for two-thirds of all subscriptions, corresponding to a mobile penetration rate of about 50.
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