DIGITAL DIVIDE

• The gap between those who have access to modern communications technology and those who don’t – coined the digital divide – opened with the emergence of the World Wide Web in 1994. The passage of the U.S. Telecommunications Act in 1996 was the first major overhaul of Federal Communications Commission regulations in more than 60 years. It expanded and deregulated broadcast and phone communications to include the Internet. Since then, the number of individuals with Internet access has grown more than tenfold worldwide.
• According to the United Nations, people in the developing world owned 30 percent of the world’s computers in 2005, up 10 percent from the early 1990s.
• The percentage of Internet users in wealthy countries is still more than 250 percent greater than in poor ones. Internet access is eight times greater in the United States than on the entire continent of Africa. London has more Internet users than all of Pakistan. Collectively, the rate of Internet usage among residents of 30 underdeveloped countries is less than 1 percent of the world’s total.
• The G8 countries are home to just 15 percent of the world’s population, but they have almost 50 percent of the world’s Internet users.
• Internet access by region: 74.4 percent for North America, 60.4 percent for Oceania/Australia, 48.9 percent for Europe, 29.9 percent for Latin America/Caribbean, 23.3 percent for the Middle East, 17.4 percent for Asia, and 5.6 percent for Africa.
• Researchers are evaluating the nature of the benefits that poorer people receive from Internet technology. Even when they do have access to the Internet, they are not always able to reap the advantages. Internet services are determined by the “80/20 factor”– 80 percent of all provider profits are made by serving the most affluent 20 percent of the population.
• The top 20 countries that have the greatest Internet bandwidth account for 80 percent of all Internet users. Denmark has more than twice the bandwidth of Latin America and the Caribbean combined. In 2008, six nations – the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, China, Italy, and United Arab Emirates – controlled 95 percent of the total international Internet bandwidth.
• When considering percentage of daily income, the cost to access the Internet has dropped in both poor and rich countries. However, the cost remains twice as high in poor countries.
• Rotary clubs around the world are working to bridge the digital divide. The Rotary Foundation is supporting 189 computer education projects in 56 countries. The countries with the greatest number of projects are India, the Philippines, Brazil, and Mexico.