Community Impact of Telebased Information Centers

Abstract

Telebased information community centers or just telecenters have been seen as the killer application to empower local communities in developed and developing countries to meet the challenges of the information society. The point of departure has been different in various parts of the world, and a number of quite diverse models for development of telebased information centers have been applied. While centers in developed countries, with an almost universal coverage of telephony services, have been focussed on enhancing IT capabilities and access to IT-based communication services, developing countries have also focussed on provision of basic telephony. This chapter presents the approaches taken in Scandinavia, Hungary, Western Australia and Ghana in order to reach these objectives, and discusses the experiences with the different models and the national strategies used for setting up telebased information centers with special attention to their applicability in developing countries.