Bevil Wood­ing

In­ter­net speed is emerg­ing as a top is­sue for In­ter­net users the world over as con­sumers, busi­ness­es, schools and gov­ern­ments clam­or for faster, broad­band speeds and bet­ter, more re­li­able In­ter­net ser­vice.

Broad­band Mat­ters

It some­times hard to be­lieve that less than three decades ago, the World Wide Web did not ex­ist; few peo­ple had even seen a mo­bile phone, and ac­cess to broad­band net­works was lim­it­ed to on­ly a few busi­ness­es and re­search in­sti­tu­tions.

To­day, In­ter­net-en­abled in­no­va­tions and near ubiq­ui­tous mo­bile ac­cess are dri­ving a tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion that is al­ter­ing economies and touch­ing every facet of life.

Busi­ness and con­sumer ori­ent­ed ser­vices, such as Voice over IP, so­cial net­work­ing, video-shar­ing, me­dia stream­ing, se­cure trans­mis­sions, dig­i­tal down­load­ing, e-learn­ing and cloud-back­ups, all re­quire more band­width and a more ro­bust net­work in­fra­struc­ture.

In ad­di­tion to con­sumer and busi­ness im­pact, broad­band helps pro­mote na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. It en­ables ef­fi­cien­cies in the de­liv­ery of gov­ern­ment ser­vices, and en­hances qual­i­ty of life fac­tors through im­prove­ments to ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, pub­lic health and pub­lic safe­ty for cit­i­zens.

Ac­cess to broad­band al­so makes a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my. A World Bank De­vel­op­ment Re­port pin­points broad­band as a key dri­ver of eco­nom­ic growth, pro­vid­ing a boost of 1.38 per cent in gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries for every ten per cent in­crease in pen­e­tra­tion.

An­oth­er study from Brazil re­veals that broad­band con­tributed 1.4 per cent of the em­ploy­ment growth rate an­nu­al­ly and in Chi­na it has been not­ed that every ten per cent in­crease in broad­band pen­e­tra­tion con­tributes an ad­di­tion­al 2.5 per cent to GDP growth. The Eu­ro­pean Union es­ti­mates that broad­band can cre­ate more than two mil­lion jobs in Eu­rope by 2015 and an in­crease in GDP of at least EUR$636 bil­lion.

This recog­ni­tion, and the con­nec­tion to eco­nom­ic growth, prompt­ed the US to in­ject mil­lions in­to broad­band in­fra­struc­ture dur­ing the glob­al eco­nom­ic melt­down. The Eu­ro­pean Union al­so pumped over EUR$5 bil­lion to­ward in­vest­ment in en­er­gy and In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture. Sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries, in­clud­ing Cana­da, France, Japan and South Ko­rea, al­so in­vest­ed from a low of US$200 mil­lion to a high of US$24.6 bil­lion in­to up­grad­ing broad­band ac­cess to more house­holds.

Sad­ly, de­spite com­pelling in­ter­na­tion­al ev­i­dence, the Caribbean lags be­hind with its in­vest­ments in ICTs gen­er­al­ly and broad­band specif­i­cal­ly. Ac­cord­ing to Cari­com's Trade and Eco­nom­ic In­te­gra­tion (TEI) desk, there is a con­tin­u­ous play of "catch-up," in the Caribbean. Re­gion­al­ly, In­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion stands at a mea­gre 28.2 per cent with just a lit­tle over 11 mil­lion In­ter­net users.

Fur­ther, on­ly one or two coun­tries can boast a na­tion­al broad­band plan. There isn't even of­fi­cial agree­ment on what should be con­sid­ered as a min­i­mum base-line speed for broad­band ac­cess. In 2011, a Cari­com ICT steer­ing com­mit­tee pro­posed 2.0Mg/bits per sec­ond, but is yet to be rat­i­fied by gov­ern­ments.

The ur­gent need to ex­pe­dite a re­gion­al broad­band pol­i­cy can­not be over-em­pha­sized; nor can the need for in­di­vid­ual states to de­vel­op na­tion­al broad­band plans be over­stat­ed.

A re­cent­ly re­leased joint re­port by the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (ITU), the Broad­band Com­mis­sion for Dig­i­tal De­vel­op­ment and net­work­ing equip­ment gi­ant, Cis­co Sys­tems, found that coun­tries with a clear­ly de­fined na­tion­al vi­sion for broad­band im­ple­men­ta­tion are sig­nif­i­cant­ly out-per­form­ing those tak­ing a more lais­sez-faire ap­proach to broad­band de­vel­op­ment.

Mind the gap: Af­ford­able ac­cess

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices and tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tions should be ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able to all be­cause of the im­pli­ca­tions they have for sus­tained eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. The goal of broad­band ac­cess is to al­low peo­ple to take ad­van­tage of its po­ten­tial, whether it's for busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, im­proved health­care, ac­cess to gov­ern­ment ser­vices, recre­ation or ed­u­ca­tion. How­ev­er, one of the biggest chal­lenges with broad­band ac­cess is that it is still not uni­ver­sal­ly avail­able, na­tion­al­ly or re­gion­al­ly.

"Dig­i­tal di­vide" is the term of­ten used to de­scribe the gap be­tween those with tech­nol­o­gy ac­cess and those with­out, with so­cioe­co­nom­ic con­di­tions of­ten be­ing key dri­ver. The term al­so ap­plies to gap in avail­abil­i­ty of broad­band in­fra­struc­ture, typ­i­cal­ly be­tween dense­ly-pop­u­lat­ed ur­ban cen­tres and sparse­ly-pop­u­lat­ed rur­al ar­eas.

Giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly small size of most Caribbean mar­kets, the pri­vate sec­tor does not al­ways have the busi­ness in­cen­tive to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress clos­ing the gap. In­vest­ments in ex­pand­ing and im­prov­ing their ser­vice of­fer­ings and net­work cov­er­age are usu­al­ly made on the ba­sis of tan­gi­ble eco­nom­ic re­turn, not so­cial ben­e­fit.

Let to the pri­vate sec­tor along, broad­band ac­cess will re­main un­even and un­re­li­able and dig­i­tal op­por­tu­ni­ties can ex­clude the low­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic seg­ments of so­ci­ety.

Where pri­vate telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers are not able or not will­ing to ad­dress de­mands for ac­cess, it is the reg­u­la­tor, the gov­ern­ment, civ­il so­ci­ety, or the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties them­selves? Or is it all of the above?

Na­tion­al plans, com­pet­i­tive mar­kets

This is why there is per­haps no is­sue more cen­tral to the de­bate about broad­band pol­i­cy than the state of and role of com­pe­ti­tion. Why? Com­pe­ti­tion leads to low­er prices, broad­er de­ploy­ment, greater in­no­va­tion, high­er speeds, and bet­ter cus­tomer ser­vice.

In every mar­ket where a low cost, high-speed, broad­band op­tion has been in­tro­duced, new seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain ac­cess to the In­ter­net and to new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

In non-mo­nop­oly mar­kets, com­peti­tors are of­ten com­pelled to re­spond with new prod­ucts, low­er prices or im­proved ser­vice. Ser­vice provider mar­gins may take a short term hit, but con­sumers ben­e­fit and busi­ness­es ben­e­fit. When ex­e­cut­ed well, in medi­um to long term, the mar­ket grows and the econ­o­my ben­e­fits.

It would be great (and pre­ferred) if In­ter­net and mo­bile ser­vice providers play­ers, had the fore­sight to in­crease the speed and low­er the cost of their ba­sic en­try-lev­el In­ter­net broad­band of­fer­ings, with­out gov­ern­ment or reg­u­la­to­ry in­ter­ven­tion. But where this is not hap­pen­ing, it would be great for reg­u­la­tors to ac­cel­er­ate the process. This is just too im­por­tant to leave to chance.

Un­der­stand­ing how to in­flu­ence com­pet­i­tive forces to spark these pos­i­tive out­comes can help coun­tries to ac­cess the broad­band ser­vices need­ed to seize the tech­nol­o­gy op­por­tu­ni­ties of to­mor­row by act­ing wise­ly to­day.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fice of Con­gress WBN (www.con­gress­wbn.org), a val­ues-based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it. He is al­so ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an ed­u­ca­tion-tech­nol­o­gy non-prof­it (www.bright­path­foun­da­tion.org). Reach him on Twit­ter @bevil­wood­ing or on face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing or con­tact via e-mail at tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters@bright­path­foun­da­tion.org.