Access
Almost 15 years ago, at the conclusion of the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), representatives of peoples of the world declared their “common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society.” Since then, being connected to the internet has become increasingly necessary for day-to-day transactions – from banking to registering children in school – and vital to the exercise of rights. However, ther...
In the last five years, reports on connectivity around the world show remarkable progress: those of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) recorded a year-on-year increase of 9% and 20%, respectively, in fixed and mobile broadband subscriptions, while this growth is even stronger in the global South. However, as levels of access to the internet increase, there is growing concern about the persistent digital divide. Although 51% of the population has internet access, the big question ...
Welcome to the ninth monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. 1. Call for grants OpenCellular Grants (OCG) is a programme to fund, promote and accelerate the non-commercial development and non-traditional deployment of OpenCellular (OC) in rural areas where access to cellular is limited due to availability of service, price of service or limited consumer demand. ...
Article republished from CIPESA's website. As of midnight on July 1, 2018, telecom companies in Uganda blocked access to social media platforms for all users and required them to pay a newly introduced Over-The-Top (OTT) tax before regaining access. The tax resulted from a March 2018 presidential directive for social media to be taxed to raise resources “to cope with the consequences” ...
Welcome to the seventh monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. 1. Get involved If you are interested in being part of a movement for more transparency in the telecom sector through open data policies and practice, please join the discussion forum at Open Telecom Data. Read more in the discussion piece by Steve Song here and a follow-up podcast interview here.&...
Access to the internet for local communities has been a challenge for decades for those working to achieve equal rights for all people, especially when dealing with groups that are affected, in one way or another, in terms of their access to such rights. In this respect there is a well-trodden pathway bringing together technological and community experiences in order to collaborate in the stren...
Welcome to the sixth monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. 1. Get involved Northern Public Affairs, in collaboration with the Internet Society, is pleased to release a call for contributions to the Fall 2018 special issue of NPA Magazine focusing on emerging developments in community networks among Indigenous peoples in North America. Read more. APC in...
While an increasing number of people are now using the internet, the lack of comparable and accurate gender disaggregated data obscures the true extent of the differences in access to, and use of the internet between men and women. This toolkit has been designed for stakeholders who are interested in integrating gender into their research projects in order to better understand this gender gap i...
A new resource launched by GSMA, in collaboration with the Alliance for Affordable Internet, the World Wide Web Foundation and APC, provides an introductory guide for researchers to collect comparable and accurate data on women’s and men’s internet access and use, and to develop a fuller global picture of the digital gender gap for a wide range of audiences to inform their strategies, plans...
Some governments in the global South are devoting increasing attention to the divide between urban and rural areas, a key issue to address the fact that millions of people are becoming left out of the information society. Access to communications in rural areas is made possible mainly by big mobile phone operators, but their services are usually not affordable for people with lower incomes. Con...
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