There is an immense information and communication technology (ICT) gap, a “digital divide”, between developed and developing countries. A person in a high-income country is over 22 times more likely to be an Internet user than someone in a low-income country. Secure Internet servers, a rough indicator of electronic commerce, are over 100 times more common in high-income than in low-income countries. In high-income countries, mobile phones are 29 times more prevalent and mainline penetration ...

The last five years have seen tremendous growth in telephone ownership and use in developing countries. Until the mid-1990s, telephones were only available in the urban centres of poor countries. Some African countries had telephone densities as low as one per thousand people. Since then, mobile telephone networks have spread rapidly in most low income countries. Many people, even in low income communities, now own telephones; and most adults make some use of them, wherever they are availabl ...

In its fourth year, the Information and Communication Technologies Task Force, through its core activities, working groups and regional nodes, made a substantive contribution to the preparations for the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society by sponsoring several regional meetings, organizing a series of global forums, producing several publications and participating actively in events organized by other stakeholders; organized three high-level round tables linking inform ...

This report examines the extent of the technology gap between and within nations, and draws on policy lessons from countries that have successfully moved up the technological

ladder. It elaborates policy frameworks for developing countries to build up their technological capabilities. It also presents the latest work of UNCTAD and the CSTD on measuring the digital divide.

The digital divide is narrowing as citizens in emerging markets get online via computers and mobile phones, with some regions now on a par with developed nations, a ranking of Web-savvy countries showed. "Encouraging is the apparent narrowing of the digital divide," said the annual "e-readiness" study published by IBM and the intelligence unit of British magazine The Economist.

The digital divide is narrowing as citizens in emerging markets get online via computers and mobile phones, with some regions now on a par with developed nations, a ranking of Web-savvy countries showed Wednesday.

With over 1bn Internet users and 2bn mobile-phone users worldwide, and continual progress in most qualitative indicators of technology-related development, the world in early 2006 may be proclaimed ever more “e-ready”. This year’s e-readiness rankings reflect such progress, as all but two countries have improved their scores from the previous year. Most of the rankings’ top players have moved upwards in lock step, and there has been little real movement in the broader ranks from 2005 to 2006 ...

UNCTAD and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have agreed to collaborate in their efforts to measure the magnitude of the digital divide and track global progress in the use of ICTs for development. With their combined expertise in developing indices and collecting statistics, the two organizations will provide an invaluable contribution to developing a Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), or composite ICT development index for international ICT performance evaluation and benchmarki

To identify the determinants of cross-country disparities in personal computer and Internet penetration, we examine a panel of 161 countries over the 1999-2001 period. Our candidate variables include economic variables (income per capita, years of schooling, illiteracy, trade openness), demographic variables (youth and aged dependency ratios, urbanization rate), infrastructure indicators (telephone density, electricity consumption), telecommunications pricing measures, and regulatory quality ...

The 15 ICT indicators are drawn from various publications and databases produced by the OECD's Directorate for Science Technology and Industry (DSTI). They will be updated annually on a rolling basis, as data become available.