national rankings

This page provides an overview of the 'broadband gap' or 'e-readiness ladder'.

It covers -

• introduction - moving away from conceptualisation of a single divide
• questions about one divide or many divides
• a 'broadband gap'?
• books and studies
• some basic statistics
• indicators

The following page considers digital divides (discussed in more detail in a multi-page profile).

     introduction

The notion of a digital divide gained attention in the 1990s with recognition that some people and institutions were not going online or were not going onto broadband.

That notion proved increasingly elastic as 'digital divide' became a mantra to justify a range of practical initiatives, digital pork barrelling, media headlines, advocacy documents and industry studies.

We question the use of 'the divide' as a shorthand. In practice it is arguably more effective to consider a range of divides that result from different circumstances and that are most effectively treated in different ways, rather than through a 'one-size fits all' approach.

Those divides include information rich v information poor, those with skill sets and big pipes versus those with few skills, those accessing the net at home versus those reliant on telecentres and cybercafes, and infrastructure that has the performance characteristics of jam tins & string.

     one divide or many?

Pippa Norris's The Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty & the Internet Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2001) suggests that there are at least three major divides:

• a global divide between the developed and undeveloped worlds
• a social divide between the information rich and the information poor
• a democratic divide between those who do and those who do not use the new technologies to further political participation

There is a similar nuanced analysis in Mark Warschauer's excellent Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide (Cambridge: MIT Press 2003) and Branko Milanovic's Worlds Apart: Measuring International & Global Inequality (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2005). Themes from Warschauer's work were highlighted in his 2002 Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide paper.

The statistics highlighted on the demographics page of this guide suggested that as of early 2001 around 67% of Australian households were not connected to the net (the apparent discrepancy in NOIE and other figures reflects access via work) and that users are young, male, earning in excess of $75,000, employed, and living in metropolitan areas.

Those on low incomes, without tertiary education, living in rural/remote areas, of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage, with disabilities, with a language background other than English, and aged over 55 are less likely to be online.

Why? Barriers to online access include set-up and access costs, lack of physical access, disinterest/confidence or perceptions of irrelevance, security concerns, lack of skills/training and illiteracy.

Skills differentials are highlighted in Eszter Hargittai's 2002 Second-Level Digital Divide: Differences in People's Online Skills paper, in Launching into Politics: Internet Development & Politics in Five World Regions (Boulder: Rienner 2002) by Marcus Franda, in The Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World (New York: Oxford Uni Press 2002) by Geoffrey Kirkman, Peter Cornelius, Jeffrey Sachs & Klaus Schwab and in The digital divide: Why the "don't-wants-tos" won't compute: Lessons from a New Zealand ICT project, a 2003 paper by Barbara Crump & Andrea McIlroy. Literature is reviewed in Maria Trujillo-Mendoza's 2001 dissertation The Global Digital Divide: Exploring the Relation between Core National Computing & National Capacity & Progress in Human Development over the past Decade.

Jorge Schement has argued that the persistence of information technology gaps reflects ongoing payment for information services that involve recurrent regular decisions (eg having a regular income sufficient to pay a monthly bill) rather than information goods such as a television that are generally paid off in the short/medium term. Schement suggests that could explain why poorer households experience less rapid and consistent diffusion of services such as the net or telephone than they did with radio and television.

     a 'broadband gap'?

It is unsurprising to encounter rhetoric about a national or regional 'broadband gap'.

That rhetoric is reminiscent of past anxieties about the 'missile gap' or 'dreadnought gap'. It is typically centred on international comparisons of highspeed internet connectivity, with lists of national/regional rankings. It frequently confuses causation with correlation, assuming that higher per capita broadband connections necessarily equate to significantly higher productivity and social cohesion.

The ITU suggested in 2002 that the number of online households (often a minority of all households) with access via broadband was

Hong Kong Canada Netherlands United States Japan France Sweden Germany Spain UK Australia Italy

77% 48% 30% 28%s 26% 25% 24% 20% 19% 13% 9% 9%

In June 2004 US President George Bush noted that on a per capita basis the US ranks 10th among industrialised nations in broadband access, commenting

That's not good enough. We don't like to be ranked 10th in anything.

That followed reports that

the US has narrowed the broadband gap with Canada by 9.2%. Since March 2003, US broadband penetration has grown by 12.2% from 33.8% to 46%, while Canadian broadband penetration has grown just 3%, from 64% to 67%.

One critic, responding to Larry Lessig's angst in 2005 about widening of 'the gap', commented that

As embarrassed as Lessig is about the US ranking 13th in broadband, isn't it more embarrassing that US high school students ranked 24th in math literacy last year? Comparing city-provided water (a real necessity) to broadband access is ludicrous.

The European Commission earlier claimed that the broadband gap between the EU and US was increasing, with deleterious results for economic productivity. The gap threatened

the Union's transition towards a competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010.

Reports in particular EU states have urged government support for rolling out broadband infrastructure, eg

If the expected economic and social benefits are to come to fruition, suppliers [in Eire] need to make investments that today are regarded as high risk before they can supply a service at a price that can be afforded by the mass-market. This means they will need to cross the 'broadband gap'.

At the regional level one advocate claimed that

Broadband makes businesses more efficient. One can purchase online, communicate with accountants and lawyers online, complete banking transactions online, receive and send time and content sensitive files online. And once there is an integration of services, such as telephone, Internet, video, and security, additional overhead is reduced and time is saved.

All of these benefits can't be overstated at a time when businesses in nearly every industry are facing intense competition from around the block and across the globe. And for businesses operating in high-cost locations like New York City, broadband can help level the playing field and give firms the competitive edge they need to thrive

In June 2007 one journalist proclaimed that "among the world's centres of commerce, Sydney is a desert for ideas and creativity". That assertion was based on MasterCard's Worldwide Centres of Commerce Index, which ranks cities on the basis of broadband access, the number of universities, the number of patents applied for (as distinct from patents granted) and number of daily newspapers per million people. Sydney ranks 14th for "overall ease of commerce" but 29th for "knowledge creation and information flow", with Melbourne at 34th overall.

The 2008 Connectivity Scorecard (CS) by London Business School academic Leonard Waverman for NokiaSiemens offered a different ranking that "measures how well countries use telecommunications technologies to boost their social and economic prosperity", rather than crude investment in ICT. Its 'top ten' nations included the US, Sweden, Japan and Australia ahead of South Korea.

As with traditional measures of teledensity, basic figures and their interpretation need to be treated with some caution. We have argued elsewhere that being 'online' is not necessarily an automatic good. Broadband access in many households in 'wired' nations such as South Korea appears for example to centre on game-playing. It does not necessarily result in economic growth outside the games and telco sectors.

Brendan Luyt's 2004 paper Who benefits from the digital divide? argues that promotion of the digital divide as an international policy issue benefits four groups: information capital, developing country governments, the development 'industry' and global civil society.

The OECD noted in 2005 that Liberia's population shares an international 256 kbit/s connection, the equivalent of just one baseline residential broadband connection in the OECD.

A single Danish resident has more bandwidth than the whole of Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Comoros, Turkmenistan, Chad and Niger combined. And a single 100 Mbit/s broadband user in Japan has access to as much international connectivity as the 45 countries with the lowest international connectivity combined.

     books and studies

Apart from reports noted earlier in this guide, the divide/s have attracted increasing academic and community attention.

For a perspective from the left consult Herbert Schiller's Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis In America (London: Routledge 1996) and Information & The Crisis Economy (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1986), William Wresch's Disconnected: Haves & Have-Nots in the Information Age (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press 1998), Cyberimperialism?: Global Relations in the New Electronic Frontier (New York: Praeger 2000) and Cyberghetto or Cybertopia (New York: Praeger 1998) both edited by Bosah Ebo. Deconstructionists can turn to Defining Away The Digital Divide: A Content Analysis of Institutional Influences on Popular Representations of Technology (PDF) by Lynette Kvasny & Duane Truex, proudly "informed by Bourdieu's sociology of language".

There are useful essays in Public Access To The Internet (Cambridge: MIT Press 1995), a volume edited by Brian Kahin & James Keller as part of the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project, in Media Use in the Information Age: Emerging Patterns of Adoption & Consumer Use (Hillsdale: Erlbaum 1989) edited by Jerry Salvaggio & Jennings Bryant and in Cyberspace Divide: Equality, Agency & Policy In The Information Society (London: Routledge 1998) edited by Brian Loader. In 2001 the OECD published a succinct report (PDF) on Understanding The Digital Divide.

Competition In Telecommunications (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000) by Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole and Milton Mueller's Universal Service: Interconnection, Competition & Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System (Cambridge: MIT Press 1996) examine universal service regimes. Both might be read in conjunction with Eli Noam's provocative Interconnecting The Network of Networks (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001).

High Technology & Low-Income Communities: Prospects For The Positive Use Of Advanced Information Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press 1999), a collection of essays edited by Donald Schoen, Bish Sanyal & William Mitchell, and Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism & Social Revolution (London: Verso 1997) edited by Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl & Michael Stack are other views from the left.

There is a more iconoclastic treatment in in The Digital Divide: Facing A Crisis or Creating A Myth (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001) edited by Benjamin Compaine. Erik Brynjolfsson's 1995 paper on Communications Networks & the Rise of an Information Elite: Do Computers Help the Rich get Richer? (PDF) is a detailed study by the eminent MIT economist.

Technicolor: Race, Technology & Everyday Life (New York: New York Uni Press 2001) is a more upbeat collection of essays edited by Alondra Nelson & Thuy Tu.

Manuel Castells' The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring & the Urban-Regional Process (Oxford: Blackwell 1989) highlighted the significance of divides within cities - most people, after all, do not live in the bush. In the US the Urban Research Initiative on information technology and the future of the urban environment is producing a series of excellent research reports and maps.

Paulina Borsook's Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech (New York: PublicAffairs 1999) offers insights into the technolibertarian 'let them eat cake' approach: just throw enough PCs and broadband at any problem and it will go away.

For enthusiastic renditions of that approach consult Wilson Dizard's Meganet: How the Global Communications Network Will Connect Everyone on Earth (Boulder: Westview 1997) and George Gilder's overhyped Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionise Our World (New York: Free Press 2000).

Pippa Norris's superb Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty & the Internet Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2001) tartly notes that "Like gambling at Rick's bar - some popular accounts are shocked - shocked - to discover social inequalities on the Internet" and then goes on to analyse figures and issues.

The 2002 International Energy Agency Energy & Poverty (PDF) study suggested that around 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity and that 2.4 billion rely on primitive biomass (eg straw and dried cow dung) for cooking and heating. Charles Kenny of the World Bank notes that around 1.5 billion people live on US$1 per day, spending roughly US$10 per year on telecommunications where available. Only 2.2% of India's online population has ever engaged in buying or selling over the web. The UN claims that 1.1 billion people around the world lack safe water to drink, 2.4 billion have no access to water for decent sanitation and about 3 million deaths a year are attributable to poor water supplies.

The October 2000 London Business School paper (PDF) by Hammond, Turner & Bain on Internet Users versus Non-Internet Users: Drivers of Internet Uptake is suggestive, as is The Evolution of the Digital Divide: How Gaps in Internet Access May Impact Electronic Commerce, a cogent 2000 paper by Donna Hoffman & Thomas Novak.

     basic stats

Other statistics are highlighted in a supplementary multi-part note.

Readers of the preceding paragraphs - and other pages of this site - will have detected a certain wariness about some of the more glib rankings and measures. They can, however, promote thought about the derivation and use of data.

One of the more entertaining indicators is the US Foreign Policy/AT Kearney Globalisation ranking -

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Ireland Singapore Switzerland Netherlands Finland Canada United States New Zealand Austria Denmark Sweden United Kingdom Australia Czech Republic France Portugal Norway Germany Slovenia Malaysia Slovak Republic Israel Croatia Spain Italy Hungary Panama Greece Japan Botswana Poland South Korea Philippines Argentina Tunisia Taiwan Chile Uganda Romania Senegal Saudi Arabia Nigeria Ukraine Russian Federation Mexico Pakistan Morocco Thailand South Africa Colombia Sri Lanka Peru Brazil Kenya Turkey Bangladesh China Venezuela Indonesia Egypt India Iran

As of 2004 those states accounted for an estimated 96% of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) and 84% of the world's population. You might compare the list with data in the Divides Profile regarding literacy, life expectance, teledensity and corruption.

Waverman's 2008 Connectivity Scorecard for "innovation driven economies" (on a scale of 1 to 10) was -

6.97 6.83 6.80 6.50 6.10 6.10 5.93 5.52 5.07 4.78 4.46 3.85 3.56 3.18 3.11 2.18

US Sweden Japan Canada Finland UK Australia Germany France South Korea Hong Kong Italy Spain Hungary Czech Republic Poland

Its complementary ranking of "efficiency and resource driven economies" was -

6.11 5.82 4.37 4.28 4.11 3.42 2.38 1.68 1.01

Russia Malaysia Mexico Brazil South Africa China Philippines India Nigeria

     indicators

Rankings include -

• World Bank Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) | here
• World Economic Forum Networked Readiness Index | PDF (2007)
• IDC Information Society Index | here
• EIU/IBM e-Readiness Ranking | here (2007)
• BSA Benchmarking IT industry competitiveness | here (2007) www.bsa.org/eiu
• OECD Broadband Portal | here (2007)

   next page (digital divides)