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U.N. Conference Tackles Digital Divide
By Michael Astor
November 14, 2007 11:12AM

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The challenges to expanding the Internet to less-developed regions around the world are daunting. Technology costs and government regulations stand in the way. Or there are questions about how to produce Web content in local languages and combat illiteracy. And in some parts of the world, even access to electricity is an issue.

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   Now that more than 1 billion people use the Internet, international policymakers and computing experts are struggling with how to link the world's other 5 billion to the increasingly crucial network.

"Ten years ago, to talk about 1 billion Internet users sounded exaggerated, unthinkable, but now we talk about the next billion," said Markus Kummer, the official heading a U.N. forum here Tuesday on governing the Internet. "It is clear sooner or later we will reach that number. It is also clear that next billion will be poorer than the first."

The U.N. created the annual Internet Governance Forum, which has no decision-making power, to discuss emerging issues such as spam Relevant Products/Services, cheaper Internet access and international differences over operating the network.

The challenges to expanding the network to less-developed regions are daunting. Technology costs and government regulations stand in the way. Or there are questions about how to produce Web content in local languages and combat illiteracy.

In some parts of the world even access to electricity is an issue.

Internet use already is spreading rapidly in the less-well-off nations that hold nearly three-fourths of the world's population: Internet use has risen to 35 percent in those lands, up from 5 percent a decade ago, according to conference organizers.

Still, fewer than 4 percent of Africans have Internet access and less than 1 percent have broadband links. And bringing the Web to areas such as Pacific island nations are complicated by small, isolated populations spread out over vast distances.

"Financing is the heart of the problem," said Mouhammet Diop, CEO of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, an Internet consulting Relevant Products/Services firm in Senegal. "We should think of new forms of financing the information society."

He said the region's impoverished nations need to work together in building up Internet infrastructure Relevant Products/Services they cannot afford on their own.

There are competing ideas of how to find that financing, and how big a role governments should play.

Jacquelynn Ruff, a vice president for Verizon Communications Inc., urged governments to seek private investment with a "transparent and stable regulatory environment and respect for the rule of law, a commitment to encouraging competition."

But many argue that access for remote rural areas will come only with government involvement, perhaps by teaming with private companies to include fiber optic cables with railroads, pipelines and other infrastructure projects.

Anita Gurumurthy, executive director of IT for Change, a network of information technology professionals based in Bangalore, India, criticized calls to focus on private financing, saying the Internet should be seen as a public priority, like health or education.

It's possible that some people may not even need computers to reach the Internet, said Valerie D'Costa of infoDef, a program at the World Bank in Washington. She suggested mobile phones might be the answer for many, especially in countries where the devices are already popular.


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