The scale of a country's digital divide reflects the condition of its economy, says ITU analyst Vanessa Gray.

"In Sweden there is a population that is highly educated and a culture of trying new things whereas in Greece income levels and educational levels are lower," she said.

League tables are important to keep nations on their toes, she thinks.

"Being able to compare gives them the incentive to do better. Governments need to know where they stand and learn from other countries," she says.

Finland, which currently has around 13% of its population offline, is so confident it can solve its digital inclusion problems it has recently declared internet access to be a basic human right.

Its public libraries have moved beyond being places where people can gain their first experiences online to offering laptop doctors who trouble-shoot a wide range of technology issues.

Wi-fi villages

Eastern Europe has traditionally lagged behind its western counterparts in terms of economics but countries such as Hungary are investing heavily in high-speed fibre-optic cables.

Despite the blue sky thinking on infrastructure, Hungary has no national e-inclusion policy and there are concerns that the networks will be far more sophisticated than citizens' understanding or use of them.

There are some efforts to conquer the problem and a wi-fi village programme is reaching out to those of its population living in rural poverty, 80% of whom are Roma or Gypsies.

So far 115 rural villages have been provided with wi-fi, offering internet access to 2,000 families living below the poverty line. The target for this year is to reach 30,000.

As well as providing the infrastructure, the project also sells recycled PCs to local Roma people for about 80 euros.

The PCs run Linux and users are trained to user Google's web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs.

One villager managed to make contact with an old friend and secured temporary jobs for himself and 20 other villagers on a construction site for a new road.

Others have started e-learning programmes while one resident used his new-found skill to make a movie about Roma culture which is on YouTube and has been watched by 90,000 people.

Barren deserts

When it comes to broadband connectivity, the era of 'if you build it, they will come', is rapidly drawing to a close in industrialised countries, Sascha Meinrath, New America Foundation

Keeping people that are part of minority communities in touch with their culture is an invaluable service that the internet can perform.

As one of the world's most advanced economies, the US is often held up as a weathervane for the state of the internet. While internet access is high in America in general, use among Native Americans stands at less than 10% according to a study conducted by the New America Foundation (NAF).

Even analogue phone lines only reach one in three families in many tribal communities, while less than 10% of respondents to a major NAF survey had universal mobile phone coverage in their community.

"Tribal homelands have stood like barren deserts in pockets across the technology-rich lands of the United States," says report author Sascha Meinrath.

The NAF study drew together views from more than 120 tribes living in 28 states across America.

It found that connected Native Americans paid substantially more for their internet access but those who are connected, use their connection more widely than the national average.

RezKast, the first Native American YouTube is currently sweeping through the community and the internet has had some more life-changing impacts too.

Five clinics in Leech Lake, a reservation with 16 villages and 4,079 residents, is using telemedicine.

It allows individuals from remote communities to access specialised health care

"This is saving peoples' lives," said network director Frank Reese.

Mr Meinrath thinks the example of the Native Americans can be replicated around the world as long as there is a willingness to teach skills alongside making kit and access available.

"It is incredibly rare that broadband connectivity won't improve the lives of those who use it effectively, in much the same way that books improve the lives of the literate. However, providing books to everyone doesn't help those who cannot read in the first place," he said.

It could be time for a major rethink on how to deal with the digital divide he thinks.

"When it comes to broadband connectivity, the era of 'if you build it, they will come', is rapidly drawing to a close in industrialised countries," he said.

"Now we need to begin far more holistic interventions to reach those remaining offline. And if some folks claim to simply not want to be online, that's their choice - though I view it as akin to pridefully claiming that you don't read books."

The need to address the widening gap between those with easy access to ICT and those without is recognised beyond the telecoms industry. The UN has included in its Millennium Development Goals (a series of targets for 2015 agreed at the Millennium Summit of world leaders), which include the eradication of extreme hunger and poverty, achievement of universal primary education and combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, the target: "In cooperation with the private sector, make available benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications technologies."¹ Broadband has been singled out for particular attention in this context; a UN press release on its recent progress report highlighted the finding that developing countries " have unprecedented access to new information and communication technologies, with over 77 per cent of the population able to receive a mobile cellular telephone signal But the digital divide between developed and developing countries continues to widen for technologies that drive modern information sharing (such as broadband internet connection)."²

A key question for the telecoms industry and for policy makers, therefore, is how to promote greater availability and higher take-up of broadband services in developing countries. This is not an easy question to answer, and no single set of solutions fits every country's situation, but, as a first step, it is necessary to identify the obstacles to universal broadband provision. On the demand side, the barriers to take-up of broadband in developing countries are: the fact that broadband services and computing equipment, such as PCs, are not affordable, unreliable electricity supplies and the paucity of local content. On the supply side, some of the limiting factors are: the shortage of and high price of international bandwidth, lack of incentives for operators to invest in rural roll-outs, limitations on access to spectrum and the lack of a supportive, reliable regulatory environment.

Some of these issues are beyond the sphere of influence of the telecoms industry, but policy can address most of them, or at least mitigate their negative impact. Wireless broadband technologies, such as HSPA and WiMAX, have a key role in provision of broadband access in developing markets, even if this is to provide access to a fixed location. Given their dependence on the use of spectrum, the roll-out of wireless networks will inevitably involve regulatory intervention. Aside from the often significant sums of money involved, government policy on spectrum may be considered a dry subject by policy makers, but is crucial to operators' business plans and has a direct impact on the ability of operators to provide the country's citizens with broadband coverage.

A recent Analysys Mason case study of the Kenyan WiMAX operator KDN highlights this point.³ KDN paid USD25 000 in 2003 for a 2×28MHz spectrum allocation in the 3.5GHz range. Since that time, other WiMAX players, including AccessKenya Group, UUNET Kenya and OneCom, have been awarded spectrum, but none has received an allocation of more than 7MHz. This means that KDN is the only WiMAX operator in the country with sufficient spectrum to deploy a WiMAX network of significant size. In addition, despite receiving requests for spectrum in the 2.5GHz range to be released in subsequent awards, the regulator released spectrum in the 3.3GHz band.

Both the amount of spectrum an operator holds and the band within which the spectrum lies are crucial to the operator's plans. In general, the higher the frequency of the spectrum, the smaller the area that can be covered. Using spectrum in the 2.5GHz band, for example, the area that can be covered by a single cell (using a given amount of spectrum, and assuming equal population density and coverage depth) can be over twice as large as is possible using spectrum in the 3.5GHz band. The cost implications of this for a network roll-out are dramatic. Figure 1 compares typical costs of providing WiMAX coverage for a large population using 2.5GHz or 3.5GHz spectrum: to provide good outdoor coverage using 3.5GHz, rather than 2.5GHz, spectrum results in a substantial 33% increase in associated costs. If indoor coverage is added to the equation, the cost of using 3.5GHz spectrum is 73% higher than if using 2.5GHz spectrum. Clearly, the business case for extending a roll-out to less-densely populated areas, or even for rolling out a network at all, can depend on factors such as spectrum availability.

This example clearly indicates that policy makers need to take into account how regulation can affect business cases for, and hence investment in, wireless broadband networks. Policy that accommodates commercial considerations and regulates accordingly can act as a key enabler of private-sector investment in developing markets. It has an impact not only on operator's bottom lines, but also on the services available to the population and on the pricing of services. A well-designed policy framework promotes win-win situations in which operators can provide broadband access profitably and end users can take advantage of this access and the benefits it can bring.

Clearly, spectrum is not the only issue affecting the implementation of effective broadband policy. A forthcoming research report from Analysys Mason, Creating a successful broadband policy in developing countries, will explore the relevant issues in more depth.

¹ Millennium Project (2006), Goals, targets and indicators. Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development, Target 18. Available at http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/gti.htm#goal8 .
² UN Department of Public Information (New York, USA, 2008), UN report: Significant progress in debt relief for poorest countries but trade and aid still major barriers to achieving anti-poverty goals. Available at http://www.un.org/esa/policy/mdggap/mdggap_pressrelease.pdf .
³ Karapandžic', H., KDN is providing reliable last-mile access and connectivity over WiMAX to ISPs in Kenya, Analysys Mason (Cambridge, 2008).

Movirtu – a for-profit enterprise – is working with mobile operators to connect the unconnected in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Its mobile phone number service, five years in the making, has recently been launched and its full commercial operations are due to begin this summer.

Movirtu's idea is another example of innovation in the fast-moving mobile phone sector – an industry already widely credited with improving livelihoods and helping lift people out of poverty. Recent research by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations has shown that an increase in mobile phone penetration of 10% is linked to raising economic growth by 1.2%.

Mobile telephony is seen as a way of leapfrogging the conventional development process as it bypasses the more extensive and expensive infrastructure needed to establish fixed line phones. For example, it enables poor people, particularly in remote areas, such as Katine, to access valuable information and services instantly, including the price of goods in local markets, mobile banking services and public health text messages.

In Katine mobile phones are being used by farmers to find out where to get the best prices for their crops.

Millions of Africans are embracing the latest mobile technology. Figures from the International Telecommunications Union, a UN agency, show that nearly 90% of all phone calls in Africa are made using mobiles and Africa is the region experiencing the fastest growth in mobile telephony.

The mobile revolution has brought with it entrepreneurship and positive change.

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, which specialises in the application of mobile technology, told the Africa Gathering conference about his development of free, large-scale text messaging solutions to empower NGOs working in developing countries. The system, called FrontlineSMS, enables instantaneous two-way communication by connecting computers and mobile phones wherever there is a mobile signal. The software does not require the internet and has been adopted for many purposes based on the needs of grassroots organisations worldwide – from Senegal to the Philippines. FrontlineSMS has been used to disseminate agricultural information, send security alerts and help monitor elections.

It this innovation continues, the benefits of mobile technology to Africa, and places like Katine, could be great.

IDC also believes that UC could change the way European enterprises buy voice and data solutions. In the past, most of the sales efforts have been focused on selling to the ICT department, but now the integration of voice and data with business-critical applications requires line-of-business (LOB) managers to have seats at the negotiating table. Other findings include:

• IDC believes that UC will offer significant opportunities for network-related services players (from both the service provider and systems integrator sides) in the short and medium term. Services companies can act as a single point of contact for the enterprise and resolve issues (ranging from licensing to network and application integration) by interacting with desktop UC players such as Microsoft and IBM, as well as voice vendors.
• IDC believes that in the first half of the forecast period, premises-based UC solutions will lead the way, but that later on in the forecast, hosted solutions will offer interesting opportunities as fixed and mobile providers work out their UC strategies.

After reviewing options for delivering high-performance broadband over a large area, the company decided a wireless network using Firetide wireless mesh nodes would be the most cost effective solution.

Aside from a 4 Mbps always-on connection, every farm in the area will also have access to new services such as VoIP and IPTV. Arnar Gunnarsson, system administrator at Tengill EHF. “New applications and speed improvements will enable farmers to remotely monitor their operations. They can adjust the digital engines that power multiple robotic milking systems, for example, or transmit and view live supply-chain data to identify bottlenecks.”

Gagnaveita Skagafjardar supplies each home or farm that buys a connection with a remote Firetide mesh node. The farm nodes communicate with additional Firetide mesh nodes at six distribution point locations. One such location, for example, employs four mesh nodes and has eight antennas pointing in every direction. Tengill is currently employing Firetide mesh equipment to connect homes and farms to distribution points separated by distances of up to 7 or 8 miles.

An always-on 4 Mbps connection using Firetide equipment leased from Gagnaveita Skagafjardar and Internet access packages sold by local ISP Fjolnet, costs less than $70 per month. Compare that with the more than $400 per month many farmers were paying for basic equipment and access services - and hourly overage charges - using 64- to -128K ISDN connections.

As of today, Tengill has 30 farms either already using or signed up for network access. Although the cold of winter, which hovers around 0 degrees (Fahrenheit), has made installing equipment slow at times, Gunnarsson says there have been no weather-related performance issues involving the nodes themselves. “So far we have been very happy with how Firetide equipment is handling our weather,” he says.