Policy as a Bridge across the Global Digital Divide

Background

The characteristics of the global digital divide can be generally grouped into two basic categories (See Figure 1). The first category describes the characteristics of the individuals who are affected by the digital divide – that is, those who fall on either side of that gap in the ability to access and use: users and potential users. The second category of characteristics describes those institutions (private or public) offering the required services to users. These service providers (and potential service providers) may be offering backbone services (such as network capacity) or last-mile services (such as end-user access) (Chandrasekhar, 2003). The combination of these two categories helps us better understand and define the global phenomenon known as the digital divide.

Figure 1.

Characteristics of the global digital divide

As a note, the digital divide is a dynamic phenomenon, changing with time (Bagchi, 2005). Therefore, while we hope to attain a conceptual understanding of the characteristics of the digital divide, how we measure the digital divide must be revisited continually to accommodate the evolution of the phenomenon.