Western Europe

This page covers digital divides in Western Europe.

• introduction
• measures - some key statistics of development and connectivity
• the UK
• elsewhere in the EU
• advocacy

     introduction

Debate about digital divides in Europe has had several facets, including -

• disagreement about the responsibilities of dominant telecommunication companies in Western Europe
• claims that government initiatives have focussed on rural/remote areas at the expense of inner cities and poorer suburbs
• questions about the efficacy of some large scale e-government programs, criticised as driven by ICT vendors and enthusiasts within public sector agencies rather than addressing community needs
• a shift from conceptualising divides solely in terms of infrastructure to divides that encompass cultural differences, accessibility and price
• a winding-back of enthusiasms for telecentres and other community access points in Western Europe as household penetration increases and the online population normalises
• increased recognition that divides in Eastern Europe may be more durable, given low household/institutional uptake of personal computers, uneven telecommunications infrastructure (often with high pricing from a dominant carrier) and inattention to accessibility issues

     measures

As of 2004 population (m) and GDP (US$bn purchasing power parity) for selected states in Europe was -

state Austria Belgium Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Luxembourg The Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom Russia Albania Belarus Bosnia Bulgaria Croatia Georgia Hungary Poland Romania Ukraine

Population 8 10 10 5 1 5 59 82 10 0.3 4 57 2 0.4 16 4 10 41 8 7 59 143 3 9 4 7 4 5 10 38 22 48

GDP 241 293 167 170 18 141 1,630 2,280 213 8 145 1,559 23 28 476 169 187 915 238 221 1,606 1,318 14 59 24 61 49 13 147 443 160 264

Australia's GDP (PPP) was US$571 billion.

An ITU report for 2004 identifies 'main' landlines and aggregate subscribers (landline and mobile) -

state	lines per 100 people	total subscribers (m)
Austria Belgium Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Luxembourg The Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom Russia Albania Belarus Bosnia Bulgaria Croatia Georgia Hungary Poland Romania Ukraine	45 46 33 64 33 45 56 66 46 65 49 44 27 79 48 48 40 41 76 70 56 25 8 31 24 35 42 13 35 31 19 25	11.7 13.8 14.2 8.6 1.7 7.3 78.4 125 16 0.48 5.79 88.7 2.1 0.89 22.6 6.39 14.6 56.5 15.6 11.5 94.7 73.4 1.3 4.1 1.9 7.5 4.4 1.5 12.3 26.9 14.6 25.8

and internet hosts (per 10,000 inhabitants) and personal computers (per 100 inhabitants) -

state Austria Belgium Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Luxembourg The Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom Russia Albania Belarus Bosnia Bulgaria Croatia Georgia Hungary Romania Ukraine

hosts 1,565 234 376 2,699 486 2,215 386 366 250 4,758 420 282 258 1,125 3,334 1,918 552 217 1,466 1,026 356 59 1.6 7 20 83 78 12 479 22 27

PCs 41 35 21 65 87 48 48 56 9 47 49 31 21 62 68 57 13 25 76 82 60 13 1.7 5 19 3 14 11 2.7

The Transparency International 2004 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked selected European states as follows (with New Zealand, Australia and Canada at 2, 9 and 12 respectively) -

state Finland Denmark Iceland Sweden Switzerland Norway The Netherlands United Kingdom Austria Luxembourg Germany Belgium Ireland France Spain Portugal Estonia Slovenia Hungary Italy Lithuania Greece Czech Republic Bulgaria Latvia Slovakia Croatia Poland Romania Russia Macedonia Serbia Albania

rank 1 3 3 6 7 8 10 11 13 13 15 17 17 22 22 27 31 31 42 42 44 49 51 54 57 57 67 67 87 90 97 97 108

The UNDP report for 2004 suggested that life expectancy at birth and adult literacy (%, ages 15 plus) was -

state Austria Belgium Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Luxembourg The Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom Russia Albania Belarus Bosnia Bulgaria Croatia Georgia Hungary

expectancy 76 78 75 76 71 77 78 78 78 79 76 78 70 78 78 78 73 76 79 80 79 78 66 72 66 74 70 74 73 71

literacy 100 100 100 100 99 100 100 100 97 100 100 98 99 100 100 100 99 92 97 100 100 100 99 96 99 94 98 98 100 98

     UK

The UK National Working Party on Social Inclusion (INSINC) with support from IBM produced a report on The Net Result - Social Inclusion in the Information Society, arguing that new technologies will address the divide if all citizens must have "access to the latest electronic communication channels", information "considered vital for participating in society" is free and there's a substantial investment in information handling skills.

The Cybrarian Project aims

to assist in decreasing the digital divide by facilitating access to the internet and to learning opportunities for those who currently do not, or cannot, use the internet because of a lack of skills or confidence or because of physical or cognitive disabilities.

In 2009 Post Office Broadband, an offshoot of the Royal Mail, justified its existence by claiming that UK families without home access to the internet "could be missing out on savings of up to £70 a month" on household goods and services. Those "non-line" families supposedly "want to get online but are being held back from doing so", either through fear or a lack of tuition. The supposed savings are attributable to use of price comparison sites.

James Stewart's 2000 The Digital Divide in the UK: a review of quantitative indicators and Public Policies paper is of particular value.

     elsewhere in the EU

Herbert Kubicek edited The Social Shaping of Information Superhighways: European & American Roads to the Information Society (New York: St Martins 1997), a collection of essays considering infrastructure and social policy initiatives. There is a more recent view in Information and Communications Technologies in Society: E-living in a Digital Europe (London: Routledge 2007) edited by Ben Anderson, Malcolm Brynin, Yoel Raban & Jonathan Gershuny.

For Finland, sometimes presented as the bellwether of broadband, see Suoranta & Lehtimaki's Children In the Information Society: The Case of Finland (New York: Peter Lang 2004) and The Information Society & the Welfare State: The Finnish Model (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2002) by Manuel Castells & Pekka Himanen.

For perspectives on the adoption of e-commerce see the 2001 paper by Éric Brousseau on Globalization of E-Commerce: Growth and Impacts in France (PDF) and the 2001 paper Globalization and E-Commerce: Growth and Impacts in Denmark by Kim Viborg Andersen & Niels Bjørn-Andersen (PDF).

     advocacy

Advocacy groups and initiatives in Europe essentially parallel those in North America, encompassing -

• broad civil society groups
• disability rights, rural, inner city and other advocacy groups with a narrower charter
• industry bodies with an emphasis on competition policy or lobbying for public sector support for delivery of infrastructure and services

Examples are -

• the UK Citizens Online Alliance for Digital Inclusion (ADI) - an industry group "committed to Universal Internet Access and to tackling the issue of Digital Exclusion so that everyone can benefit from the riches of the Internet"

   next page (Eastern Europe)