Thursday, 9 May 2013

Tackling the Divide on the Ground

ICT can be very over powering however it can also be very cost effective. Putting a community IT centre ore kiosk in a central point of a village will cause a lot of the to be taught about IT resulting in lots of people having access to information and communication on the internet therefore changing their lives. In Bolivia, these identical internet centres are used to check information on crops, markets and regulations that might effect them.

Broadcasting
Digital broadcasting is a good example of technology and political barriers eliminating the gap in the divide. Villages in rural Asia used to rely on low-quality broadcasts given by low quality equipment. Nowadays they have access to high quality images and sounds that given at a range that was at one point unimaginable. Rivers, jungles and densely populated cities are all more fortunate with wireless technology. In the Middle East and North Africa they consider digital TV as a bad thing because they think it is a bad thing to have access to western values and norms because it is seen as corrupting as in some religions. Community radio stations in Africa have been used to provide health warnings, agricultural information and weather disaster warnings.

Governance
A major challenge is often associated with the governments of under-served nations. Most of the time there are high tariffs on importing high technology, occasionally there are large amounts of red tape or regulations that have to be cleared before goods can be imported. Successful strategies have been adopted in Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates. The Dubai  Internet City has been set up to act as a free trade zone. This is to encourage investment in ICT through the Middle East.

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