2. Internet Basics
3. Internet
economics: what things cost (in different countries) and who
pays
4. Market
structure, monopolies and multinationals
5. Network interconnections and exchanges
6. Regional
differences: Africa, Asia, Europe, USA
7. Technical
infrastructure of the Internet and how that shapes governance
8. Market
models for extending access
9. Access
and infrastructure- social models for extending the reach
of the Internet
 PART
2: The Internet, markets and access
There
is a range of issues surrounding how to ‘democratise’ the
Internet. But the starting point for policy considerations
is how to ‘enfranchise’ the Internet in the first
place by making access more affordable. In developed countries,
Internet users have often complained about the (relatively)
high cost of Internet access, as in the Internet strikes in
Europe in 1998-9, where many users in Belgium, France, Italy,
Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland refused to connect
for 24 hours in protest at the high cost and to demand a low
flat rate. But the paradox of the digital divide is that it
is often more expensive to access the Internet in developing
countries than it is in developed countries.
Simply
put, an individual user in the US accessing the Internet over
an ADSL line at 512 Kbps has the
same bandwidth as Sierra Leone. The cost for the US user is
around US$50 per month, but for Sierra Leone the cost of this
bandwidth could be around US$4,700 per month for the country.
At each step, it can be more expensive to access the Internet
in the developing world than in the developed world. This is
because of the telecommunications infrastructure on which it
relies, and the governance structure of the Internet. Also
with any commodity, volume affects price. Therefore developing
nations who have less traffic than developed nations will find
it harder to obtain cheaper prices.
In
this Part 2, we look at some of these injustices, with particular
reference to Africa, where the problem is most acute, explain
how they come about, and provide some pointers towards ways
of providing access for all people in developing countries.
This involves analysing how Internet costs are shaped partly
by its unique technical structure (chapters 2 and 5) but also
very much by its commercial setup (chapters 3 and 4). Some
regional differences are explained in chapter 6, and chapter
7 then looks at how the technical infrastructure affects Internet
governance. Finally we look at some initiatives to address
the problems raised in this part of the book.
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