Now, think Mobile Technology for a second
How often have you heard that there are three billion unique mobile subscribers in the world?
That is, indeed, an impressive figure - nearly half of the world's population.
Figure 3 - The Tablet Photographer by Wei-Feng Xue on Flickr
And given that today, mobile technology is the easiest entry point to the Internet, we could assume that with every mobile that is activated, a new opportunity is born for someone in less advantaged regions. However, the actual picture behind these numbers is rather different.
As Harsha Liyanage and Philip Edge explain, across Africa, the Pacific, the Caribbean and South Asia, the new digital divide experienced at the 'bottom of the pyramid' has multiple guises - in terms of signal coverage, technology and policy environments.
In rural Africa the cost of running a network or transmission tower, essential to enable the voice and data transfer of mobile phones, exceeds by about 40% the potential revenues. Being such an unprofitable endeavor, most governments and private entities prefer not to invest in rural areas. As a result, there is a shortage of about 60,000 network towers to meet the mobile communication needs of African rural populations. In this context, as Liyanage and Edge explain, having a mobile phone with a SIM card
(one of those three billion SIM cards worldwide we are always reminded of), is equivalent to a dead piece of plastic in the absence of a mobile signal.
Only last year, Reuters reported people climbing on trees to access the mobile network in some parts of Sierra Leone.
Figure 4- John Stanmeyer, Image shot for National Geographic. Photograph: John Stanmeyer/AFP/Getty Images
Significantly, the winner of the Word Press photo of the year 2013, by John Stanmeyer, shows African migrants on the shore of Djibouti at night, raising their phones in an attempt to capture an inexpensive signal from neighbouring Somalia.
While telecommunications advances into third generation (3G) and even fourth generation (4G) mobile communication standards, 80% (according to GSMA Intelligence) of users in developing countries still live with second generation (2G) signal coverage.
What does this mean?
It means that while a mobile phone is the first entry point to the Internet for the majority of the poor, most of them are limited to accessing only voice and text messages. This differs dramatically from the advanced capabilities most of us are so used to like broadband, touchscreens, high storage capacities or high definition mobile TV.
Would a (hypothetical) sudden push and investment in the development and implementation of leT policies in developing countries extend the benefits of the
Net wider?
It certainly would.
But in some countries there are no responsible government authorities to address the issues related to ICTs, investments, trading, etc. nor coordination mechanisms put in place to work between responsible authorities.
However, even if there was a concerted effort by local and international governments to resolve these problems, there is another major issue that runs a lot deeper - llliteracy.
Here are some shocking stats on Literacy based on a Unesco report published in January 2014.
But things don't stop here.
In fact, I fear the generational, geographical, financial, educational, and gender disadvantages we've just mentioned will only be aggravated by one major problem.
Moore's Law.