Formulation of sustainable universal access projects using information and communication technologies (ICTs)

Civilization is now in an era of profound and global change, the “Information or Knowledge-based Society.” The development, globalization, and declining cost of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are leading to “the death of distance.”

In addition to communicating simultaneously and in person, people can now communicate remotely, synchronously or asynchronously, using different low cost, high-speed means, virtually without environmental distortions of communicative behavior. ICTs also enable vast quantities of information to be created, processed, stored, and distributed rapidly and efficiently.

“Information Society” has been variously defined. Examples are given in Table 1.

Table 1. “Information Society” defined:

The Information Society implies a tri-faceted revolution:  the revolution of the ICTs, and an economic and a social revolution.

In the new economy, knowledge is the basic form of capital and economic growth depends on the creation of knowledge within society.  Developing countries are faced with the challenge of transitioning to the Information Society if they are to remain competitive in a globalized world.

According to a report by Accenture, Markle Foundation, United Nations Development Programme,[6] ICTs have the potential to be an enabler of development because:

• They can be applied to the full range of human activity, from personal use to use by groups, organizations and businesses, communities, and society as a whole.

• They are an enabler in the creation of networks and allow those with access to them to benefit from exponentially increasing returns as usage increases.

• They foster the dissemination of information and knowledge by separating content from its physical location.

• The "digital" and "virtual" nature of many ICT products and services allows for zero or declining marginal costs.

• They radically reduce transaction costs.  Replication of content is virtually free regardless of its volume, and marginal costs for distribution and communication are near zero.  

• They lead to substantial efficiency gains in production, distribution and markets, as they can store, retrieve, sort, distribute, and share information.

• They promote the creation of new products, services, and distribution channels within companies, and also new companies through increased efficiency and reduction of costs.

• They facilitate disintermediation, as they make it possible for consumers to acquire products and services directly from the original provider, reducing the need for intermediaries.

• They provide individuals, groups, and organizations the ability to live and work anywhere, allowing them to become part of the global network economy.

Explanations for the ever-greater number of opportunities that ICTs now afford are: 

• Growing demand for ICTs

• Major expansion in network capacity in the short- and medium-term as a result of advances in microelectronics, optics, and wireless technologies

• Declining costs and enhanced service capacities owing to the development of software and the key part it plays in network administration and new service provision

• Convergence of technologies, which means that less investment is required in network expansion

However, ICTs may also have negative effects, some known and some not yet known.  Table 2 shows their main negative effects.

 Table 2:  Potential negative effects of ICTs

To summarize, in addition to their benefits, ICTs may have other, negative effects, this to some extent depending on such national and international policies on their use as may be implemented in societies and the world.

The United Nations, among other international organizations and national governments worldwide, is making efforts to incorporate ICTs in societies and to reduce the digital divide.  Many countries have developed their own digital agendas, and the World Summit on the Information Society,[10] first in Geneva, in 2003, and now in Tunisia, in November 2005, is being implemented.

It is an aspiration of governments to achieve for their populations universal access to ICTs or, still more ambitiously, universal ICT service.  Universal access is defined as the opportunity for everyone to be a reasonable distance from a telecommunication point or, more recently, from ICTs.  The telecommunication point may be individually or group based (e.g., the home), organizational and/or community-based, to include public access points.[11]

Universal access is defined as the nationwide non-discriminatory availability to every member of society of affordable telecommunication services.  Such services may be made available to individuals directly or in the household.[12]

The governments of different countries are allocating resources to investment projects for universal access to ICTs.  In Chile, for example, a Telecommunication Development Fund was implemented in 1994, as a governmental tool to provide access to telecommunication services to remote and marginalized sectors of the population.

The logical model proposed in this course enables a profile of a universal ICT access project to be formulated and the most sensitive variables examined with a view to determining ex ante the sustainability of the proposed solution.

Inés Salas
Ricardo González
Oscar Riveros

UnderSecretariat of Telecommunications
Ministry of Transport and Public Works Government of Chile
Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones (SUBTEL)
Ministerio de Transportes y Obras Públicas del Gobierno de Chile.

[1] Cairncross, F.: The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change
Our Lives (Harvard Business School Press; 1997)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/102-9543982-0010524
[2] Castells, M.: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. I.
The Rise of the Network Society (Cambridge, MA. Oxford, U.K., Blackwell Publishers; 1996)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/102-9543982-0010524
[3] Castells, M.: La dimensión cultural de Internet (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, July 2002).
Date consulted: August 2005. See http://www.uoc.edu/culturaxxi/esp/articles/castells0502/castells0502_imp.html
[4] World Summit on the Information Society: http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/listing-all.asp?lang=es&c_event=s|1&c_type=all|
[5] Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_society
[6] Accenture, Markle Foundation, United Nations Development Programme: Creating a
Development Dynamic: Final Report of the Digital Opportunity Initiative (2001). See http://www.opt-init.org/framework/pages/2.1.1.html
[7] Spears, R., Postmes, T., Wolbert, A.: Social Psychological Influence of ICTs on
Society and Their Policy Implications, at
http://www.infodrome.nl/publicaties/domeinen/03_spears.html
Lee, C.A., Williams, B.S., and Edwards, P.N.: Evaluating Information and
Communications Technology: Perspectives for a Balanced Approach.
Report to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (December 2001) at http://www.si.umich.edu/pne/kellogg/
[8] Abaitua, J.: Universidad de Deusto. Information fatigue syndrome. See http://sirio.deusto.es/abaitua/konzeptu/fatiga.htm#fatigue
[9] Bernard, B.P., at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pdfs/97-141.pdf Prolonged physical inactivity, sometimes associated with poor posture, which produces musculoskeletal pain in the neck, back, and head. Inactivity aggravates sedentarism and promotes the development of overweight and obesity. Visual disorders, such as eye fatigure, eye strain, focusing difficulties, eye irritation, dryness of the eyes, reddening of the eyes, and blurred vision.
Yale University. A Guide for the Safe Use of a Video Display Terminal, at http://www.yale.edu/oehs/vdtguide.htm Thrombosis from prolonged inactivity. Beasley. R. et al., 2005 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=
Abstract&list_uids=15806178&query_hl=3 [10] World Summit on the Information Society, at http://www.itu.int/wsis/basic/index-es.html
[11] Sarroco, C.: Elements and Principles of the Information Society, at http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/wsis-themes/Access/BackgroundPaper/IS%20Principles.pdf
[12] ITU: World Telecommunication Development Report: Universal Access. 4th edition (1998). Paraphrased from http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/wtdr_98/wtdr98.pdf.