Bevil Wood­ing

Any user of In­ter­net-based tech­nol­o­gy knows all too well the frus­tra­tion of a slow or un­re­li­able con­nec­tion. Whether it's the In­ter­net con­fer­ence-call that keeps drop­ping; the soft­ware up­date that won't down­load; or the video or mu­sic stream that keep buffer­ing; few things are more frus­trat­ing than an un­re­li­able, balky, In­ter­net con­nec­tion. As we race in­to what Mi­crosoft is call­ing the "mo­bile first, cloud first" era, the en­abling as­sump­tion of avail­able, af­ford­able, broad­band In­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty is be­ing chal­lenged. In to­day's hy­per-con­nect­ed world, the mo­bile-first, cloud-first era needs broad­band first.

And the prob­lem is not just re­strict­ed to de­vel­op­ing re­gions like the Caribbean, where ex­pen­sive, un­re­li­able con­nec­tiv­i­ty still char­ac­ter­ize much of the In­ter­net land­scape. Rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, towns and even cities in so-called de­vel­oped coun­tries like the Unit­ed States, Great Britain, France and Aus­tralia, al­so suf­fer from con­nec­tiv­i­ty chal­lenges.

Broad­band for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment

Broad­band is a range of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies that pro­vide high-speed ac­cess to the In­ter­net. As more peo­ple use mo­bile to con­nect, it leaves busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ments and even ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions will lit­tle choice but to bol­ster ef­forts to serve their tar­get au­di­ences on the In­ter­net-con­nect­ed plat­forms they use every day. Like­wise, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of mo­bile de­vices and In­ter­net de­pen­dent ap­pli­ca­tions is cre­at­ing unique chal­lenges for In­ter­net and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice providers.

In­fra­struc­ture, con­tent, de­vice and ser­vice op­er­a­tors all have to deal with the re­al­i­ty of ex­plo­sive­ly grow­ing de­mand cloud and mo­bil­i­ty ser­vices. The de­sire from con­sumers and cor­po­rate cus­tomers alike is to re­alise the promise of im­proved pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, com­pet­i­tive­ness and in­no­va­tion, tech­nol­o­gy is sup­posed to en­able.

"Many peo­ple now view high-speed ac­cess to the In­ter­net as a right, not a priv­i­lege. It is easy to see why, giv­en so­ci­ety's de­pen­dence on the In­ter­net for every­thing from ba­sic com­mu­ni­ca­tions to glob­al com­merce," says Bernadette Lewis, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union.

Speak­ing at the re­cent Caribbean In­ter­net Gov­er­nance Fo­rum in the Ba­hamas, Lewis said, "The right to com­mu­ni­cate is a foun­da­tion ten­ant of the in­for­ma­tion so­ci­ety. It must be based eq­ui­table, af­ford­able and uni­ver­sal ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and knowl­edge. This ac­cess in turn em­pow­ers peo­ple, coun­tries and en­tire re­gions to meet their as­pi­ra­tions and achieve their de­vel­op­ment goals."

Af­ford­able, uni­ver­sal­ly ac­ces­si­ble broad­band In­ter­net ac­cess is key to build­ing the in­for­ma­tion so­ci­ety and pow­er­ing the knowl­edge econ­o­my. The num­ber of smart­phones in use world­wide has now bro­ken the one bil­lion mark. Mo­bile da­ta net­work ex­pan­sion–es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas out­side of ur­ban cen­ters in emerg­ing mar­kets with ris­ing mid­dle class­es–and the adop­tion of smart­phones and fea­ture phones with In­ter­net ca­pa­bil­i­ties will fu­el growth of the mo­bile phone In­ter­net con­sumer base.

Mo­bile phone users are rapid­ly switch­ing over to smart­phones as de­vices be­come more af­ford­able and 3G and 4G net­works ad­vance. Be­tween 2013 and 2017, world­wide mo­bile phone pen­e­tra­tion is ex­pect­ed to rise from 61.1 per cent to 69.4 per cent of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion, ac­cord­ing to a new eMar­keter re­port, "World­wide Mo­bile Phone Users: H1 2014 Fore­cast and Com­par­a­tive Es­ti­mates."

More than 2.23 bil­lion peo­ple world­wide, or 48.9 per cent of mo­bile phone users, will go on­line via mo­bile at least month­ly in 2014, and over half of the mo­bile au­di­ence will use the mo­bile In­ter­net next year.

En­ter­pris­es, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ments, have had to re­act to the ex­plo­sion of da­ta de­mands on their tech­nol­o­gy in­fra­struc­ture while ac­com­mo­dat­ing the needs of in­creas­ing­ly dis­cern­ing and de­mand­ing users. The rad­i­cal na­ture of the changes tak­ing place ne­ces­si­tates a fun­da­men­tal shift in ap­proach to in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment mod­els, pub­lic pol­i­cy and tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

Time for broad­band ac­tion

Gen­er­al of the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union, Dr Hamadoun Tour�, de­scribes broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty as "a crit­i­cal el­e­ment in en­sur­ing that ICT can be used for the ef­fec­tive de­liv­ery of a vast range of ser­vices in­clud­ing health, ed­u­ca­tion, gov­er­nance, trade, com­merce and so much more."

Ac­cord­ing to Tur�, broad­band-based net­works are pow­er­ful cross-cut­ting en­ablers to achieve the three pil­lars of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment – eco­nom­ic growth, so­cial in­clu­sion and en­vi­ron­men­tal bal­ance.

Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki-moon al­so stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies are pow­er­hous­es of the glob­al econ­o­my, of­fer­ing so­lu­tions for sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth and shared pros­per­i­ty.

At a func­tion to mark this year's World Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion and In­for­ma­tion So­ci­ety Day, he em­pha­sised that broad­band net­works pro­vide smart eco-friend­ly ways of man­ag­ing cities and trans­port sys­tems, en­hance the ef­fi­cien­cy of man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­tries, and make it pos­si­ble to con­duct long-dis­tance di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment of pa­tients in re­mote lo­ca­tions. He recog­nised that broad­band al­so en­ables in­no­v­a­tive ed­u­ca­tion­al ap­pli­ca­tions world­wide.

Re­think­ing strate­gies

The wide-reach­ing, po­ten­tial ben­e­fits of broad­band, de­mand a more de­lib­er­ate, strate­gic ap­proach to its adop­tion na­tion­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly. Now is the time to re­think strate­gies for de­ploy­ing broad­band in­fra­struc­ture. There are a num­ber of ques­tions sur­round­ing mo­bile and In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture that need to be ad­dressed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in de­vel­op­ing mar­kets like the Caribbean. For ex­am­ple, should pri­vate sec­tor in­ter­ests have ex­clu­sive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for set­ting the timetable for tele­com in­fra­struc­ture up­grades?

It is al­so time to de­vel­op more holis­tic ap­proach­es to tech­nol­o­gy-en­abled sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. For ex­am­ple, we need to iden­ti­fy gaps in lo­cal con­tent � in­clud­ing lo­cal ac­cess to lo­cal ap­pli­ca­tions and ser­vices, on lo­cal net­works and fa­cil­i­tat­ed by lo­cal trans­ac­tions. We al­so need to ad­dress the re­search and de­vel­op­ment gaps. For ex­am­ple, what is the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit of in­creas­ing broad­band ac­cess and low­er­ing In­ter­net ac­cess costs to Caribbean economies?

We need to set pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties for al­lo­cat­ing ra­dio-fre­quen­cy spec­trum for broad­band, ful­fill­ing uni­ver­sal ac­cess oblig­a­tions, and ac­cel­er­at­ing in­fra­struc­ture build-out.

Se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion needs to be giv­en to new ap­proach­es to col­lab­o­ra­tion for the greater good, such as com­mon net­work in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port mul­ti­ple wire­less ser­vice providers. And, im­por­tant­ly, we need in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms to sup­port de­vel­op­ment of tech­ni­cians, en­tre­pre­neurs and en­ter­pris­es need­ed to build on broad­band.

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Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN, a Caribbean based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, and the founder and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion. Reach him on Twit­ter @bevil­wood­ing or on face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing or con­tact via e-mail at tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters@bright­path­foun­da­tion.org.