Ger­ard Best

By 2016, one per cent of the world's pop­u­la­tion will own more than half of its wealth. The stag­ger­ing pro­jec­tion, from a re­cent study by an­ti-pover­ty group Ox­fam, made head­lines just as the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum (WEF) was get­ting start­ed in Davos last month.

One con­cern for sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) Pro­fes­sor Tim Un­win, who was at the WEF, is that the rapid spread of in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies is not help­ing to re­duce that grow­ing gap be­tween poor and rich.

"The dif­fer­ence be­tween the least de­vel­oped and the most de­vel­oped in get­ting greater. In that way, you can say that ICTs are ac­tu­al­ly in­creas­ing in­equal­i­ty," he said, in a tele­phone in­ter­view from the an­nu­al gath­er­ing of top po­lit­i­cal and busi­ness lead­ers in Switzer­land.

As head of a body bring­ing to­geth­er per­spec­tives of tele­coms stake­hold­ers from across the 53 coun­tries of the Com­mon­wealth–about one-third of the world's pop­u­la­tion–Un­win is deeply con­cerned about that grow­ing dig­i­tal di­vide, and the dual im­pact of tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment on the world's poor­est.

De­vel­op­ing Caribbean ca­pac­i­ty

"One of the things that al­ways strikes me when I vis­it the Caribbean is how much more ad­vanced and suc­cess­ful and con­nect­ed it is than many oth­er parts of the Com­mon­wealth," he said.While the is­lands' size is a source of some eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, it al­so pro­vides some ad­van­tages."The is­lands are rel­a­tive­ly small, so it is not so prob­lem­at­ic to get uni­ver­sal con­nec­tiv­i­ty, as com­pared with, say, Nige­ria or Pak­istan," Un­win said.

But In­ter­net ac­cess and con­nec­tiv­i­ty alone won't re­duce the gap be­tween poor and rich. For Un­win, the re­al pri­or­i­ty is not sim­ply to in­crease the quan­ti­ty of In­ter­net users but to im­prove the over­all qual­i­ty of In­ter­net us­age. Two ma­jor is­sues af­fect­ing qual­i­ty, he said, are band­width and cost, which is where In­ter­net ser­vice providers and in­dus­try reg­u­la­tors play such a crit­i­cal role in the re­gion's In­ter­net eco-sys­tem.

"What you can do with large band­width com­pared with low band­width is in­cred­i­bly dif­fer­ent, par­tic­u­lary with the rapid in­crease in ap­pli­ca­tions that use video and large amounts of da­ta. And the sec­ond vari­able is cost. That's where reg­u­la­tors play a cru­cial role in help­ing to en­sure that mar­kets op­er­ate as ef­fec­tive­ly as pos­si­ble."

De­liv­er­ing Caribbean con­tent

The point of de­vel­op­ing lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty, Un­win was quick to point out, is to de­liv­er lo­cal con­tent. The po­ten­tial of the un­der­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy is on­ly re­alised if it is used to fa­cil­i­tate the de­liv­ery of oth­er ser­vices, such as dig­i­tal bank­ing, on­line ed­u­ca­tion, mo­bile health or e-gov­ern­ment. But that is eas­i­er said than done.

"Con­tent de­vel­op­ment is quite ex­pen­sive and re­sources aren't al­ways put in­to that. It's much eas­i­er to lay a bit of fi­bre than it is to de­vel­op the con­tent that is go­ing to go over it," said Un­win, who al­so sits on the ad­vi­so­ry board of the m-Pow­er­ing De­vel­op­ment Ini­tia­tive of the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Union (ITU).

One ob­sta­cle to de­vel­op­ing lo­cal con­tent, he said, is the lack of func­tion­al re­la­tion­ships be­tween gov­ern­ment min­istries or even min­is­te­r­i­al de­part­ments, which would need to har­monise their op­er­a­tions in or­der to pro­duce high-qual­i­ty lo­cal con­tent.

So sig­nif­i­cant is the dif­fi­cul­ty in­volved in de­vel­op­ing rel­e­vant lo­cal con­tent that there is a great temp­ta­tion to sim­ply im­port con­tent from abroad, and side­step the grow­ing pains of build­ing lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty. But short­cuts are dan­ger­ous, Un­win said, cit­ing the ex­am­ple of MOOCs, or mas­sive­ly open on­line cours­es, which are web-based cours­es aimed at un­lim­it­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion through open ac­cess.

"I'd like to chal­lenge some of those who think that things like MOOCs are the so­lu­tion for the ed­u­ca­tion of small-is­land states. I com­plete­ly dis­agree be­cause MOOCs can be a form of cul­tur­al or in­tel­lec­tu­al im­pe­ri­al­ism. The fact that peo­ple can get ac­cess to cours­es from rich­er coun­tries is prob­lem­at­ic, to me. What we want to have is lo­cal­ly de­vel­oped, lo­cal­ly pro­duced con­tent, that is in­dige­nous to users in Caribbean coun­tries."

The chal­lenge for Caribbean so­ci­eties, there­fore, is to de­fine and pro­duce con­tent that is ap­pro­pri­ate and rel­e­vant, to en­able so­lu­tions that align with de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties."You have to make sure you have the right con­tent in the right for­mats for the right peo­ple. If you're just im­port­ing con­tent from out­side, you're not build­ing the knowl­edge-base of your own coun­tries."

Be­yond the di­vide

One of the CTO's key part­ners in help­ing the re­gion to face up to this chal­lenge is the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU). The two work to­geth­er on pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment, and have col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly at sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­na­tion­al gath­er­ings, in­clud­ing meet­ings held by the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Union.

"We be­lieve, as does the CTU, in the re­al im­por­tance of avoid­ing du­pli­ca­tion and over­lap. One of the things we re­spect about the CTU is their open­ness to work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly," Un­win said.The CTU was es­tab­lished in 1989 by the heads of Cari­com gov­ern­ments, to sup­port its mem­bers in lever­ag­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions for so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. Un­win ex­plained the im­por­tance of the CTO in help­ing the CTU pur­sue that mis­sion in a glob­alised en­vi­ron­ment.

"Across the world, there are dif­fer­ent re­gion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions unions, some­times work­ing in iso­la­tion and there­fore un­able to learn from each oth­er. So, what's hap­pen­ing in Africa may not be known in Asia. Or what's hap­pen­ing in the Caribbean may not be as well known to peo­ple in the Pa­cif­ic. One of the things that the CTO can do is bring to­geth­er per­spec­tives from peo­ple from many dif­fer­ent parts of the Com­mon­wealth, so that to­geth­er we can do far more than any one of us could do by our­selves."

Sev­er­al Caribbean min­is­ters were among 30 of­fi­cial del­e­gates from across the Com­mon­wealth who signed an agree­ment out­lin­ing shared prin­ci­ples for the de­vel­op­ment of broad­band, at the CTO's first-ever Com­mon­wealth ICT Min­is­ters in Lon­don in March of last year. The CTO is work­ing with the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States and the CTU to help Caribbean states seek­ing to take that com­mit­ment for­ward, Un­win said.

At one up­com­ing work­shop, or­gan­ised in part­ner­ship with the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment, Un­win will fo­cus on how tech­nol­o­gy can help im­prove qual­i­ty of life for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties."Last time I was in Port-of-Spain," he said, "we ran a work­shop for young peo­ple on how they can use tech­nol­o­gy to build their en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills and con­tribute to the econ­o­my."

Part­ner­ing with suc­cess

Un­win re­turned to Trinidad this month as a fea­ture speak­er in the CTU's 25th An­niver­sary ICT Week, which ran from Feb­ru­ary 2 to 6, at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel.

The event cel­e­brat­ed the achieve­ments of CTU mem­bers and the con­tri­bu­tion of strate­gic part­ner­ships, like the one with the CTO, drawn from with­in and be­yond the re­gion. The last two days fea­tured work­shops or­gan­ised in part­ner­ship with the In­ter­net So­ci­ety, the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry, the In­ter­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of As­signed Names and Num­bers, the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, The Amer­i­can Reg­istry of In­ter­net Num­bers, Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty and Arkitechs.

Among the high­lights of the five-day event was the sign­ing of new agree­ments be­tween the CTU and the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Satel­lite Or­gan­i­sa­tion and the ITU.