Re: [GKD] Connecting Developing Countries

[Al Alegre]

On Monday, March 20, 2006, David E. Bailey wrote:

> Many of you may be interested in this report from the World Bank about
> the state of connectivity in LDCs.
 ...snip...

Thanks for this... and congratulations to the authors and sponsors for
this useful publication.

I did take a look at this a couple of weeks ago, and though the
executive summary and some country tables are available for free
download, the entire publication is not. Pity, as the selling price (40
dollars) may be a barrier to sharing this resource within LDCs
themselves...

One would hope that World Bank would have an Open Access policy, as most
(all?) of its publications are probably funded using public funds? I may
be wrong, but it is a hope that such materials--like many ITU
publications--could be shared in the public domain.


Thanks,

Al Alegre




***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization***
To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type:
subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd
Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at:

[GKD] Connecting Developing Countries

[David E. Bailey]

Dear Colleagues,

Many of you may be interested in this report from the World Bank about
the state of connectivity in LDCs.



Connecting Developing Countries
BBC
March 9, 2006

Five years ago in Nigeria, there were 370,000 people with mobile phones.
Just four years later, mobile phone users in the country topped 16.8
million. It's a result that has made the Nigerian mobile phone market
the second largest in Africa.

And in the Philippines, there are now more mobile phone subscribers than
fixed telephone subscribers. By the end of last year, the Philippines
had about 40 million mobile phone subscribers - six times more than in
2000.

These two countries are among the 144 economies named in a new World
Bank report, "Information and Communications for Development 2006: Global
Trends and Policies", which examines progress worldwide in rolling out
access to Information and Communication Technologies (known as ICT).

According to Mohsen Khalil, Director of the World Bank Group's Global
ICT Department, the report shows the mobile telephone revolution has
been a key driver behind increased access to ICT in developing
countries.


Mobile Phone Growth

"Developing countries have witnessed a remarkable progress in terms of
connectivity over the past 10 years", Khalil says.

"In 1990, developing countries had only 20 percent of the total
telephone lines in the world. Today they have 60 percent. And more
interesting is that the growth is still in the developing countries and
this is mostly due to the mobile telephony revolution."

There are now more mobile than fixed phones and about 70 percent of the
developing world's population - over 50 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa -
live within footprint of mobile phone services

The report also makes the point that with prepaid services and calling
cards, even poor households benefit from increased telephone access.

By 2005, half the world's households had telephones. Among developing
regions, the telephone subscription rate is highest in Eastern Europe
and Central Asia - where it more than doubled from 2000 to 2004. But
growth was highest in Sub-Saharan Africa - with the telephone
subscription rate tripling - albeit to a still low 103 subscribers per
1000 people.


Mixed Picture for the Internet

Bank economist and editor of the report, Christine Qiang, says while the
developing world has seen huge progress in the rollout of basic
infrastructure for communications technology, the picture is more mixed
for advanced uses such as the internet.

Worldwide internet use quadrupled between 2000 and 2005. But as Qiang
points out: "while developed nations have more than 300 secure internet
servers per one million people, developing nations have fewer than two.
Canada has more secure servers than all the developing countries
combined."

Eastern Europe and Central Asia are in the lead among developing
regions, with 117 internet users per 1000 people. That's six to eight
times as many as in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The report also says developing countries still have far to go to make
access to ICT commonplace in governments, schools and businesses.  For
example, while most developed nations have connected nearly all of their
primary and secondary schools to the internet, only 38 percent of
developing countries have done so. For Africa, the figure is less than
one percent.


The Way Ahead

The report urges developing countries to work in partnership with the
private sector to extend the reach and use of ICT. And there is also a
need to break down existing monopolies in developing countries.

"The existence of monopolies still in about half of the developing
countries, particularly over long distance and international
communications - which have determined the course of internet service -
is the main obstacle today for the dissemination of information
services," Khalil says.

"The developing countries have to complete their liberalization process
by bringing an end to the remaining monopolies and fully liberalizing
the provision of services by encouraging the private sector to provide
services at an affordable cost," he says.





***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization***
To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type:
subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd
Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: