The Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has re­vealed that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic stim­u­lat­ed a mas­sive ac­cel­er­a­tion in dig­i­tal adop­tion through­out the re­gion.

In it’s lat­est re­port ti­tled, “Uni­ver­sal­iz­ing ac­cess to dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to ad­dress the con­se­quences of COVID-19”, ECLAC not­ed that dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies have been es­sen­tial to the func­tion­ing of the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety dur­ing the cri­sis caused by the coro­n­avirus, (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

The Com­mis­sion high­light­ed that com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works and in­fra­struc­ture are be­ing used more and more in­tense­ly for pro­duc­tive, ed­u­ca­tion­al, health and en­ter­tain­ment-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties and to keep in touch with friends and rel­a­tives.

The re­port stat­ed: “Progress that was ex­pect­ed to take years to ma­te­ri­al­ize has been made in a few months.”

How­ev­er, the study al­so high­light­ed that the de­vel­op­ment and adop­tion of tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions are con­di­tioned by par­tic­u­lar struc­tur­al fac­tors, which in­clude a het­ero­ge­neous pro­duc­tion struc­ture, a high­ly in­for­mal and pre­car­i­ous labour mar­ket, a vul­ner­a­ble mid­dle class, a weak­ened wel­fare state, poor dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and so­cio-eco­nom­ic re­stric­tions on ac­cess and con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

ECLAC posit­ed that the coun­tries of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean have tak­en steps to en­cour­age the use of new tech­nolo­gies and to en­sure the con­ti­nu­ity of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices but not­ed that the scope of these ac­tions is “lim­it­ed by gaps in ac­cess to and use of these tech­nolo­gies and by con­nec­tion speeds.”

Ac­cord­ing to ECLAC, the ac­cess gap with re­gard to broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty deep­ens and wors­ens in­equal­i­ties.

The Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion re­port­ed that Con­nec­tiv­i­ty, which is un­der­stood as the avail­abil­i­ty of a broad­band ser­vice that is fast enough and the pos­ses­sion of In­ter­net-ready de­vices, af­fects the right to health, ed­u­ca­tion and work, while it can al­so in­crease so­cio-eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ties.

It un­der­scored: “Con­nec­tiv­i­ty is one of the con­di­tions nec­es­sary for lever­ag­ing the val­ue cre­at­ed by dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies.”

In 2019, ECLAC re­vealed that 66.7 per cent of the re­gion’s in­hab­i­tants had an In­ter­net con­nec­tion. It not­ed that the re­main­ing third has lim­it­ed or no ac­cess to dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies ow­ing to their eco­nom­ic and so­cial sta­tus, par­tic­u­lar­ly their age and area of res­i­dence.

The dif­fer­ences be­tween ur­ban and rur­al ar­eas in terms of con­nec­tiv­i­ty are al­so sig­nif­i­cant, said ECLAC, not­ing that in the re­gion, 67 per cent of ur­ban house­holds are con­nect­ed to the In­ter­net, while on­ly 23 per cent are con­nect­ed in rur­al ar­eas.

The study al­so re­vealed that in terms of age groups, young peo­ple and old­er per­sons are the least con­nect­ed. It dis­closed that 42 per cent of those younger than 25 years and 54 per cent of peo­ple old­er than 66 years of age are not con­nect­ed to the In­ter­net.

ECLAC stat­ed that the least con­nect­ed groups are chil­dren aged be­tween 5 and 12 and adults over the age of 65, while the most con­nect­ed are peo­ple be­tween the ages of 21 and 25 and be­tween the ages of 26 and 65.

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This is im­por­tant, ac­cord­ing to ECLAC be­cause “low con­nec­tion speeds re­in­force ex­clu­sion as they pre­vent the use of dig­i­tal tele­work­ing and dis­tance learn­ing so­lu­tions.”

Since the be­gin­ning of the COVID-19 cri­sis, ECLAC high­light­ed that the de­mand for broad­band com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices has sky­rock­et­ed. It as­sert­ed that the in­crease in on­line traf­fic has put a strain on net­work ca­pac­i­ty and re­silience, and sev­er­al coun­tries record­ed a de­crease in av­er­age net­work down­load speed dur­ing the first few months of lock­down. How­ev­er, the com­mis­sion said that avail­able da­ta sug­gests that this sit­u­a­tion has been rec­ti­fied.

Nev­er­the­less, ECLAC in­di­cat­ed that as of June 2020, 44 per cent of the re­gion’s coun­tries were un­able to pro­vide the down­load speeds re­quired to al­low sev­er­al on­line ac­tiv­i­ties to take place si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly (con­nec­tion speed was less than 25 Mbps).

The com­mis­sion re­vealed that down­load speeds of around 18.5 Mbps al­low two ba­sic ac­tiv­i­ties (the use of email) and one high-de­mand ac­tiv­i­ty (play­ing videos or video-con­fer­enc­ing) to be car­ried out si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The re­port stat­ed that this meant that users had to choose be­tween dis­tance learn­ing and tele­work­ing.

It added that when the down­load speed is less than 5.5 Mpbs, users can car­ry out on­ly ba­sic ac­tiv­i­ties, which do not in­clude tele­work­ing or dis­tance learn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, tele­work­ing has proved fun­da­men­tal to the sur­vival of some com­pa­nies and for pre­vent­ing the spread of the coro­n­avirus. How­ev­er, it not­ed that while 7.9 per cent of the world’s work­force worked from home on a per­ma­nent ba­sis pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, main­ly in­dus­tri­al out­work­ers and ar­ti­sans, on­ly a mi­nor­i­ty were tele­work­ers.

It posit­ed that the pro­por­tion of work that can be done re­mote­ly varies among coun­tries for struc­tur­al rea­son, not­ing that labour mar­ket struc­tures, pro­duc­tion struc­tures, lev­els of in­for­mal­i­ty and the qual­i­ty of dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture play a key role.

ECLAC un­cov­ered that in Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States, al­most 40 per cent of work­ers can work from home, com­pared to less than 15 per cent in some African coun­tries. How­ev­er, it es­ti­mat­ed that in the case of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean tele­work­ing is fea­si­ble for rough­ly 21.3 per cent of em­ployed per­sons.

There­fore the study ac­knowl­edged that dig­i­ti­za­tion has played a fun­da­men­tal role in al­low­ing some pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ties to con­tin­ue dur­ing lock­down, there is how­ev­er con­cern that the in­equal­i­ty of labour mar­kets in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean will wors­en.

The Com­mis­sion ex­plained that “in the ab­sence of poli­cies to sup­port the most vul­ner­a­ble work­ers against a back­drop of con­sid­er­able in­equal­i­ties in ac­cess to tech­no­log­i­cal tools, sig­nif­i­cant het­ero­gene­ity in the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of work­ers at var­i­ous in­come lev­els and a pro­duc­tive struc­ture con­cen­trat­ed on low-val­ue-added ac­tiv­i­ties, tele­work­ing deep­ens in­equal­i­ties.”