At the 14th Global
Symposium on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) indicators held in
Gaborone, Botswana, between November 21 and 23, 2016, the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) released this year’s report. Excerpts:
The
International Telecommunication Union (ITU's) flagship annual Measuring the Information
Society Report, was recently released, showing that the world is getting more
and more connected and reveals that there are still huge investment
opportunities for the private sector to connect the unconnected.
This
is coming as Nigeria was ranked the 137th out of its 175 members under review
for this year, just as the Korea Republic topped the ranking chat, reports DigitalREALMS.
This is coming as Nigeria’s economic value within the ICT for Development Index
was 2.72, whereas it was 2.48 in 2015, while the ranking was stagnant.
The
Measuring the Information Society Report is widely recognized as the
repository of the world's most reliable and impartial global data and analysis
on the state of global ICT development and is extensively relied upon by governments,
international organizations, development banks and private sector analysts and
investors worldwide.
"To
bring more people online, it is important to focus on reducing overall
socio-economic inequalities," said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao.
"Education and income levels are strong determinants of whether or not
people use the Internet. ICTs will be essential in meeting each and every one
of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and this report plays an
important role in the SDG process. Without measurement and reporting, we cannot
track the progress being made and identify areas that require action, and this
is why ITU gathers data and publishes this important report every
year."
The
Republic of Korea tops the IDI rankings in 2016 for the second consecutive
year. The top 10 countries of the IDI 2016 also include two other
economies in the Asia-Pacific region, and seven European countries. Three
island countries in the Caribbean – St. Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, and Grenada
– featured among the most dynamic countries with strong improvements in their
IDI value and rank.
"This
year's results show that nearly all of the 175 countries covered by the index
improved their IDI values between 2015 and 2016," said Brahima Sanou,
Director of ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau, which produces the
report each year. "During the same period, stronger improvements have been
made on ICT use than access, mainly as a result of strong growth in
mobile-broadband uptake globally. This has allowed an increasing number of
people, in particular from the developing world, to join the information
society and benefit from the many services and applications provided through
the Internet."
MEASURING MOBILE ADOPTION
Mobile phone adoption has largely
been monitored based on mobile-cellular subscription data since these are
widely available and regularly collected and disseminated by regulators and
operators. At the end of 2016, there are almost as many mobile-cellular
subscriptions as people on earth and 95% of the global population lives in an
area that is covered by a mobile-cellular signal. However, since many people
have multiple subscriptions or devices, other metrics need to be produced to
accurately assess mobile uptake, such as the number of mobile phone users or
mobile phone owners.
INTERNET POTENTIAL UNDERUSED
An
increasingly ubiquitous, open, fast and content-rich Internet has changed the
way many people live, communicate, and do business, delivering great benefits
for people, governments, organizations and the private sector. However, many
people are still not using the Internet, and many users do not fully benefit
from its potential.
Most
people have access to Internet services but many do not actually use them. The spread of 3G and 4G networks across the world make the
Internet increasingly available to more and more people. In 2016,
mobile-broadband networks covered 84% of the world's population, yet with 47.1%
Internet user penetration, the number of Internet users remain well below the
number of people with network access. While infrastructure deployment is
crucial, high prices and other barriers remain important challenges to getting
more people to enter the digital world.
The
full potential of the Internet remains untapped. Internet users with higher levels of education use more
advanced services, such as e-commerce and online financial and government
services to a higher degree than Internet users with lower levels of education
and income levels, who predominantly use the Internet for communication and
entertainment purposes. This suggests that many people are yet to benefit fully
from the opportunities brought by the Internet.
Access
to the Internet is not enough; policy-makers must address broader
socio-economic inequalities and help people acquire the necessary skills to
take full advantage of the Internet.
This is in line with a more integrated development approach, like that adopted
in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which highlights that
development challenges are linked and cannot be achieved in isolation.
Many
people still do not own or use a mobile phone. Household data from developing countries show that a
significant part of the population does not use mobile-cellular services at
all. In developing economies where recent household data is available, close to
20% of the population, on average, are still not using a mobile phone.
Most
people who do not own or use a mobile phone are among the youngest (5-14 years
old) and those more than 74 years old segments of the population. Usage and
ownership penetration rates amongst these age groups are much lower than
amongst the rest of the population. Among the 15-74 age group, 85% or more of
the population owns or uses a mobile phone in the countries where data are
available. But this is changing.
Progress in Least Developed
Countries - Mobile-cellular prices continued to decrease in 2015, and the price
drop was steeper than in previous years. For the first time, the average
cost of the mobile-cellular basket (which includes 100 SMS and 30 mobile calls
per month) in developing countries accounted for less than 5% of GNI per
capita. Least Developed Countries (LDCs) saw a 20% fall in mobile-cellular
prices, the strongest decrease in five years. The price drop is linked to the
increasing availability of prepaid packages that bundle SMS and local
calls.
Affordability
is the main barrier to mobile-phone ownership. It is the cost of the handset, rather than the cost of the
service itself, which is often reported as the main barrier to owning a mobile
phone. Another important barrier is the lack of perceived benefits. In
communities where overall mobile uptake is low, mobile phone use is perceived
to have fewer benefits since fewer community members are also using this mode
of communication. Other barriers include lack of ICT skills necessary for
accessing the Internet through a mobile phone.
Asia and the Pacific has the lowest
average purchasing power parity (PPP) $ price for mobile-cellular services of
all regions. The region is home to countries
with the lowest mobile-cellular price baskets worldwide: Sri Lanka and
Bangladesh, where prices stand out at PPP$ 2.45 and PPP$ 4.14 per month.
Fixed-broadband prices continued to
drop significantly in 2015 but remain high – and clearly unaffordable - in a
number of LDCs. Globally, the price of a basic
fixed-broadband connection has fallen from around USD 80 per month in 2008, to
USD 25 in 2015, corresponding to a drop in the ratio of price to average GNI
p.c. from over 90% to 14%. In LDCs, a fixed-broadband plan with a minimum of
1GB of data per month still corresponds to over 60% of GNI per capita.
Mobile-broadband is cheaper and more
widely available than fixed-broadband, but still not deployed in the majority
of LDCs. Globally, handset-based
mobile-broadband prices have fallen from an average of PPP$ 29 per month in
2013 to PPP$ 18 in 2015. Mobile-broadband services are only offered in 38% of
the LDCs; however, in those countries where the service is offered,
handset-based prices have more than halved in PPP terms during the period
2012-2015 and prices now account for 11% of GNI per capita. Still,
mobile-broadband cannot always replace fixed-broadband Internet access,
especially the business sector and a growing number of applications require
higher speeds and better connection quality.
REGIONAL COMPARISONS
Europe
continues to lead the way in ICT development. It had the highest average IDI value among world regions
(7.35). Countries in Europe generally have liberalised communications
markets with high levels of ICT access, use and skills.
A
number of countries in the Americas significantly improved their performance in
the IDI. Several countries in Latin America,
notably Bolivia and Mexico, also made noticeable progress in their IDI
performance. Similar to other regions, the growth of mobile-broadband
subscriptions was particularly influential on these outcomes.
The
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
region is the most homogeneous in terms of ICT development. Nearly all
countries in the CIS region have IDI values above the global average. All
countries also improved their IDI values as a result of improvements in
mobile-cellular and mobile-broadband penetration.
The
Asia-Pacific region is, by contrast, the most heterogeneous. The top seven economies in the Asia-Pacific region have IDI
values above 7.50 and rank within the highest quartile of IDI 2016. The
region also includes a number of countries which significantly increased their
IDI value and rank over the year, including Bhutan, Myanmar and Malaysia.
However, nine out of 34 countries in the region, including several with large
populations, are least connected countries (LCCs).
There
is great diversity in ICT development across the Arab States. The five highest performing countries in the Arab States
region are oil-rich high-income economies, but the region also includes a
number of low-income countries, three of which are LCCs. This illustrates that
the digital divide between the LCCs and the more prosperous countries in the
region may be growing.
Africa
is working on pushing up its IDI performance.
The average IDI 2016 value for the Africa region was 2.48 points, just over
half the global average of 4.94. The majority of the 39 African countries in
IDI 2016 are LDCs. This reflects the lower level of economic development in the
region, which inhibits ICT development. The highest growth achieved was in the
number of mobile-cellular subscriptions, in contrast to other regions, in which
the number of mobile-broadband subscriptions experienced the highest growth.
ITU's Africa region does not include
the North African Arab States.
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