Trade in Information and Communication Services: Opportunities for East and Southern Africa

This study was commissioned by the Global Information and Communication Technologies Department (GICT) of the World Bank and prepared by Telecommunications Management Group, Inc. (TMG). Funding for the study was provided under a Bank-Netherlands Partnership Program (BNPP) grant (Trust fund No 056459). It is based on interviews and research conducted in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda in October 2006 and during follow-up meetings in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in September-November 2007.

Publication available here: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTINFORMATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONANDTECHNOLOGIES/Resources/282822-1208273252769/Trade_in_ICT_services-opportunities_for_E&SA_mod.pdf

IPTV: The Killer Broadband Application

TMG issues a new report on the number of IPTV subscribers around the world and a wealth of other statistics and market information. See:

IPTV Gathering Steam: Almost 10 Million Television-Over-Broadband Subscribers Worldwide

The report can be ordered from:

http://reports.tmgtelecom.com/iptv/

The Economist also has a nice chart from the report: Internet Protocol Television

United Nations E-Government Readiness Index

The United Nations has published five reports on e-government. There is an overall "E-Government Readiness" index that factors in the e-government web measure, infrastructure and human capital. The web measure index is the pure e-government index. There are now four years of web measure indexes available (2003, 2004, 2005, 2007); the 2001 values are not included because a different methodology was used.

See: http://www.unpan.org/egovkb/index.aspx

Is the Internet Stuck?

Is the Digital Divide growing or shrinking? In a relative sense, the divide seems to be shrinking. The number of Internet users around the world grew from 381 million in 2000 to 795 million in 2004, an annual average growth rate of 20%. Growth was higher in developing countries so that their share of the world’s Internet users rose from 21% in 2000 to 39% in 2004. The number of Internet users per 100 inhabitants in developing countries was 1.6 in 2000 rising to 5.9 by 2004. As a result, the relative difference in Internet penetration between developed and developing countries dropped from 19.5 to 8.5 between 2000 and 2004. These numbers suggest that the digital divide is shrinking.

Although the relative difference between developed and developing countries has decreased, the absolute difference has increased. The difference between Internet users per 100 inhabitants in developing and developed countries rose 13.6 points between 2000 and 2004, from 30 to 43.6. One alarming statistic is that the annual growth rate in Internet users has been declining since 1998. The intense focus governments around the world have been giving information and communication technology (ICT) has not translated into a dramatic rise in growth and the Internet risks “getting stuck.” If the decline in growth rates continues, then it is unlikely that the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) goal “to ensure that more than half the world’s inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach” will be met by 2015. [1] At current trends, less than a fifth of the developing world will be online by 2015 (see Figure).
[1] See WSIS Plan of Action, “B. Objectives, goals and targets” available at http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/poa.html

WSIS endorses the Digital Opportunity Index

The second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which met in Tunisia in November 2005, endorsed the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) as a tool for measuring the Digital Divide. Paragraph 115 of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society says:

"We also note the launch of the ... Digital Opportunity Index, which will build upon the common set of core ICT indicators as they were defined within the Partnership on Measuring the ICT for Development. "

The DOI consists of 11 internationally endorsed ICT indicators classified in three categories: Opportunity, Infrastructure and Usage. One of the highlights of the DOI is its ability to analyze ICT development along both a fixed and wireless path (see figure). This reflects the importance of mobile communications for reducing the Digital Divide around the world.

For more on the DOI see Measuring the Gap

Measuring mobile competition

The competitiveness of the telecommunications sector is an important determinant of market development. But measures to reflect this are often lacking or simplistic. For example, a proxy is often employed with a value of 3 assigned if a country has full competition, 2 if it has “partial” competition, 1 if it has a duopoly (two operators) and 0 if there is a monopoly. This type of measure not only lacks granularity (a more precise reflection of how intense competition is in markets where it exists) but also raises questions such as the definition of “partial” competition and the difference with a duopoly. Another method used is based on the number of operators under the assumption that the more there are, the better. This has limitations since some countries issue regional licenses for telecommunications resulting in a relatively large number of operators but not necessarily more competition. A market organized on regional lines with 3 regions and two operators per region would have 6 operators. It is a less competitive market than a country with 3 operators with nationwide licenses.

One way to measure the intensity of competition is to use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). The HHI is based on the market shares of each company operating in an industry. The market share for each company is squared; these are then added up to get the HHI. A monopoly market would have an HHI of 10’000, a duopoly with each operator having half the market would have an HHI of 5’000 and a market with 4 operators each having the same market share would have an HHI of 2’500. The HHI is computed for the Israeli mobile market (based on subscribers) which had four operators at the end of 2004:

Operator Market share Market share squared
Partner 32% 1,024
Cellcom 34% 1,156
Pelephone 30% 900
MIRS 4% 16
Total 100% 3,096

The HHI has been calculated for 40 major economies for the year 2004. The most competitive mobile market is Hong Kong with an HHI of 1897. The least competitive is Mexico with an HHI of 5,873 . The impact of competition is noticable. Hong Kong has the most affordable pre-paid prices in the world at US$3.35 per month. Mexico has an HHI some three times higher than Hong Kong; mobile prices in Mexico are also some three times higher than in Hong Kong.

UN adopts core ICT indicators

A group of UN agencies adopted a list of core ICT indicators at a meeting in Geneva in February 2005. The intent is to have a common list of indicators to enhance international comparisons. The group of agencies, known as the "Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development" consists of the ITU, OECD, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, UN Regional Commissions, the UN ICT Task Force and the World Bank.

The core indicators are classified into three categories: Infrastructure and access core indicators (12 indicators), Access and use of ICTs by households and individuals (13 indicators) and Access and use of ICTs by businesses (12 indicators).

The list of core indicators is here:

China is Number 2

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reported that there were 79.5 million Internet users over the age of six in mainland China in December 2003. That makes China the second largest country in the world in terms of Internet users after the US. This is a ten-fold increase since CNNIC’s first survey back in October 1997 when it reported just 620’000 users. China attained its first fully functional Internet connection on 20 April 1994, a 64 kbps link to the US. Just short of a decade later, by the end of 2003, international Internet bandwidth had grown to 27,216 Mbps.

It may be some time however until China catches up with the US. Based on current trends, the US will reach an Internet penetration of 100% with some 314 million users in 2012. At that time, China would have around 236 million users for a penetration of 17%. So while China’s Internet growth has been impressive, it will have to go to even higher levels to get a majority of its population online within the next decade.

See CNNIC's 13th Statistical Survey on the Internet Development in China (PDF).

Superstars of the Mobile Internet

No surprise: Japan and the Republic of South Korea lead the world in using mobile phones to access the Internet. What is noteworthy is that for the first time a methodological framework has been used to rank countries by mobile Internet penetration. A new report, Superstars of the Mobile Internet: Top ten mobile multimedia nations, calculates the number of mobile Internet users for 45 major economies comprising over 90% of worldwide mobile subscribers.

The report argues that the term mobile multimedia user is preferred when describing people who use their mobile phones (or mobile networks) to download entertainment, exchange picture messages and access the Internet. That is because some of these activities may not necessarily involve the use of the Internet but do require a higher degree of sophistication than sending simple text messages.

Perhaps surprisingly, France ranks third in the world. The French telecommunication regulator, ART began reporting the number of mobile multimedia users in March 2004, when it noted there were 6.7 million. These statistics are featured in its mobile observatory quarterly releases. ART supplies a fairly detailed definition of mobile multimedia user.

Apart from Japan and South Korea, the only other Asian nation in the top ten is Singapore. The other countries in the top ten are all from Western Europe--either large nations such as Germany, Spain and the UK or Nordics such as Finland, Norway and Sweden. The report estimates that there were 86 million mobile multimedia users around the world in 2003.

Data used in the report were compiled from official sources such as government regulatory agencies, mobile operators and national statistical offices. Considerable time was spent on sorting out different definitions, data formats and derivations to arrive at a comparable data set. A key feature of the analysis was comparing operator reported administrative records with national statistics office surveys. The report proposes a set of key mobile multimedia indicators that operators and regulators should consider collecting to enhance comparability.

There is a press release for Superstars of the Mobile Internet.
For information on ordering the report, click here.

Computer literacy in Sri Lanka

Source: http://www.statistics.gov.lk/cls2004/comp_lit_map.htm

"The successive governments of Sri Lanka have taken many progressive initiatives to develop Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector in Sri Lanka. For all citizens, ICT has been found to be beneficial as ICT can provide solutions to the various needs of the citizens. For citizens to get the maximum benefits from these projects they need to be computer literate.
Certain groups are far less likely than others to have computers or online access. Lack of such access affects the ability of children to improve their learning with educational software, adults to acquire valuable technology skills, and families to benefit from them. This phenomenon is called digital divide. There is growing concern about the implications of ‘digital divide’, whereby some social groups lack the means to access new Information and Communication Technologies, while others reap labour market rewards for being on the cutting edge of these technologies.
To plan and implement strategies to minimize this gap, a comprehensive examination of computer use in work places, homes and community settings is required. The extent to which students have access to computers at school and at home may be an indicator of how well prepared students will be to enter into technological workplaces which demands computer literacy.
The Department of Census and Statistics conducted a pilot study to assess the computer literacy of household population in the group of 5 – 69 years of Sri Lanka as well as to find out to what extent they use computers for various activities including use of e-mail and internet facilities. Availability of home computers, e-mail and internet facilities etc in the households were also assessed by this study. This study was conducted as a household survey. Household members in the age group of 5 – 69 years of scientifically selected 11,500 households covering all districts other than Mulativu and Kilinochchi were interviewed.
Sri Lanka is still not a fully-fledged computer user. Therefore, it is not possible to adopt definitions on computer literacy used by developed countries. In defining computer literacy for this survey, some sort of level of comfort around computers rather than a look of fear and a feeling of foreboding was used. For this survey a person was considered as computer literate if he/she could do something on his/her own using a computer. For example, if a child of 5 years old could play a game using a computer on his/her own, he/she was considered as computer literate. Some key findings of this study are described below.
Estimation of computer literacy of the household population in the age group of 5 to 69 years of Sri Lanka was the main objective of this study. At national level, 10 percent of the above population is computer literate. Western Province reported the highest computer literacy rate of 15.3 percent and the lowest percentage of 5 percent was reported from Uva and North Central provinces. "