Bridging The Digital Divide

Providing internet to remote areas and to people who can’t afford it is proving to be expensive. Who will pay to close the digital divide?

In the Canadian Arctic, the internet is so expensive that crafty individuals have taken to importing data. This happens in the most low-tech way possible: large data files are downloaded by a sympathetic collaborator in the south where the internet is cheaper, and the southerner then puts the data on a USB key and pops it in the post to go north. “If you have unlimited money, you could actually get as much internet as you really wanted,” a northern exposed internet user,Tiggatujuq, told ‘Motherboard’. “But I don’t have unlimited money.”.
As global internet usage has increased seven-fold over the past 15 years, the digital divide has narrowed over the past decade. A study by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency, shows that 3.2 billion people, or 43% of the world’s citizens, are now online. Broadband is now affordable in 111 countries, but one  fact remains: not everybody has been benefiting equally from technological progress, as the Canada example shows.
At least the Canadian Arctic, and other remote areas in the UK and Europe, has some internet access, which is more than can be said for many counties. Only 34% of households in developing countries have internet access, compared with more than 80% in developed countries. And while the digital divide is narrowing, the pace of progress is actually slowing: The number of internet users grew by 8% last year, compared to 10% in 2013, and consumer internet traffic grew by 21% last year, compared to 24% in 2013, according to Mary Meeker, the renowned Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers analyst.
Barriers to accelerating internet adaptation growth include things like phases in adoption cycles, said Meeker during her annual ‘Internet Trends’ report at May’s Re/code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, but there’s also the fact we may have exhausted the low-hanging fruit. Further growth depends on high adaptation in developing markets where people may have less spending power, and in progress in areas where the infrastructure is less developed.
Fixing the latter problem is expensive and may depend on financial outreach in areas where building the infrastructure isn’t economically viable. In more remote areas of the UK, satellite broadband may be subsidised in order to provide coverage to remote areas: “We will achieve 95% [broadband] coverage by 2017. Yes, there is the 5% of households who might not be reached by superfast broadband, but the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is clear that people will be able to use alternative technologies so that everyone has access in due course,” Truss said to ‘The Yorkshire Post’ last month.
Facebook’s Internet.org initiative has launched in ten countries already, including India, Kenya, Colombia and Indonesia, with the aim of granting free mobile internet access to people who normally can’t pay, or lack the hardware to access it. The initiative has however proved controversial: only a small number of websites are available on Internet.org. 67 digital rights groups have signed an open letter to Facebook highlighting concerns that the initiative renders Facebook a gatekeeper to the internet: “It is our belief that Facebook is improperly defining net neutrality in public statements and building a walled garden in which the world’s poorest people will only be able to access a limited set of insecure websites and services.”.
In developing countries, where the government is unable or unwilling to subsidise internet rollout, people who can’t afford to pay for mobile data may welcome a limited internet as a whole lot better than nothing. Data-heavy content like videos can’t be accessed on Internet.org, which you could argue is reasonable, as it is a free, basic service. But while Internet.org is providing an internet connection to people who may have none, it’s not really closing the digital divide, merely creating a new one.
However, Facebook’s approach is not the only way for a private company to bring internet to the masses. Mozilla is working with Grameenphone in Bangladesh, where people get 20MB of free data per day after watching an ad. Mozilla is also working on similar projects with Orange in a number of African countries. The idea is to boost the sale of Mozilla’s phones, while also provide an internet that’s unrestricted, undivided and truly for everyone.
What do you think about internet.org and other ways to bridge the digital divide? Send us a tweet @VPSNET and let us know.