Do Business Well

As the reach of the information superhighway grows, assumptions about equal access to its benefits are increasingly made. These range from the expectation that students have used email and surfed the Internet, to claims that the Internet overcomes global disparities between more and lesser economically developed countries. Companies from all over the world can compete for the same business via the Internet, with sites that do not necessarily reflect company size, longevity or financial success.

In fact, at a local as well as a global level, access to the Internet is far from universal. In 1999, it was estimated that 170 million people had Internet access. This is a minute 4 per cent of the world’s population, and 50 per cent of the global population have yet to make a telephone call, let alone access the Internet. More than 80 per cent of those with Internet access are in North America and Europe (Hamelink 2000: 81). So rather than being a social leveller, the Internet is yet another divide between rich and poor, the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, the networked and the non-networked. Furthermore, the gap between the advantages associated with being online and the disadvantages of not being online is continuing to diverge.

The ‘digital divide’ is confirmed by a report from the US Digital Divide Task Force (NTIA 2000), which notes that:

Disabled people are only half as likely to have Internet access as the able- bodied.

• Access is less common in households with low income levels.
• There are large differences in penetration rates between different ethnic groups.

No significant differences exist between male and female users.

Whysall (2001) shows that national statistics in the UK demonstrate significant differences in Internet access between geographical regions. Rates of 35-40 per cent in the South East contrast with 25 per cent in the North East, 24 per cent in Scotland and 20 per cent in Northern Ireland. Timmins (2000) notes that when income levels are taken into account, just 3 per cent of the poorest groups have access, compared with 48 per cent of the richest.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
The Digital Divide

• Electronic Money and Online Transactions
• Launch Your Digital Marketing Program part 3
• The Impossible Task of Digital Enforcement
• Launch Your Digital Marketing Program part 1
• Digital Television
• Keeping Secrets in the Digital Age
• My Career needs clear HD Radio
• E-commerce Branding as part of Integrated Marketing Communication Strategy
• Launch Your Digital Marketing Program part 2
• Small Business Starter Financial knowledge

6 Comments »