Quantifying global digital divide : do info-communication technologies equalise or not?

• Main Author: Koh, Eng Beng.
• Other Authors: Fu, Wayne Wei-Jen
• Format: Final Year Project
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Communication::Cultural studies
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/1190
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The new information and communication technologies (ICTs) withits “leap-frogging” characteristics have been hailed as the equaliser to the digital divide. Previous empirical studies on diffusion of ICT shave shown that income is an important determinant of digital divide, but none has purported to illustrate how income shaped the trend of divides due to old and new ICTs since their commercial introduction. This study proposes to address the gap in the quantification of the digital divide for the old and new ICTs : fixed linetelephone, mobilephones, the Internet and broad band. Regressions find that income play sacritical role in shaping the globa ldigital divide, and divides due to new ICTs are aggravating fast.