Vikas Nath wrote:
> I was wondering if there are figures, literature, anecdotes or
> case-studies available on the COST of bridging the global digital
> divide.
>
> It will be interesting to estimate, how much will it require to bring
> Basic Connectivity to all.
Just who cares for such numbers, pray tell? Is this for the sake of
creating a number so it gets thrown around everywhere for ten years
until someone else comes up with another one?
If so, here's my figure for "Basic Connectivity to All". About $3
trillion over ten years ("all in" costs, including hardware,
installation, service, usage), consisting of (a) capital costs of $1
trillion to provide electricity and teleconnectivity to some 400 million
households without electricity and 500 million households without
teleconnectivity at an average of $2,000 per household to have such
access to 'electrons' (with or without wires, and intermediated by other
waves) and (b) operating costs of about $200 billion a year for these
500 million households to use the electricity and connectivity
(electricity and telephony bills, but also leasing computing devices).
Current costs are high, but I have factored in some cost reduction in
both electricity and teleconnectivity, allowing for some growth in usage
over a decade.
Satisfied? Or show me I am wrong by more than a factor of two!
To put this in perspective, $3 trillion is perhaps about 7% of all
global investment in everything over a decade. If bridging the digital
divide improves productivity and employment enough, the investment would
pay for itself, no? Think someone would pay me $50k to write a paper on
how bridging the digital divide is a global public good? ;-)
Nikhil (with a slight smirk as usual)
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