Connecting Everyone To Internet 'Would Add $6.7 Trillion To Global Economy' (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A report, titled Connecting the world: Ten mechanisms for global inclusion, and prepared for Facebook by PwC, says that global economic output would increase by $6.7 trillion if internet access was brought to the 4.1 billion people in the world who do not currently have it. It's estimated that this would raise 500 million people out of poverty. The company behind the report says affordability, rather than infrastructure, is the main barrier to internet adoption in most areas. More than 90% of people live in areas where the infrastructure exists to get them online, but most of them can't afford to do so. The report describes a 500MB data plan that costs more than 5% of one's monthly income as "unaffordable." Ethiopia, Nigeria and the Philippines, for example, would need to cut the price of internet access by over 90% in order for 80% of their populations to get online. Improved technology, or even installing existing technology in developing nations, will be sufficient in bringing much of this cost reduction. Facebook's Internet.org project, aimed at partnering carriers in developing nations to give low-cost internet access, has been criticized for allowing users to access some websites, like Wikipedia and Facebook, without paying for the data they use. Others say such an approach is worth it in the long run. "The important thing here is to get things moving," says Jonathan Tate, technology consulting leader at PwC. The report' authors estimate that the last 500 million people to get online won't be able to rely on piecemeal improvements. Instead, they'll need new "disruptive technologies" being created by companies like Google, with its Project Loon plan to mount internet access points on balloons, and Facebook, with its solar-powered, laser-armed 4G drone called Aquila.

Comments

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I hole-hardedly agree, but allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesnt take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like its a peach of cake.

laudable but..

[Virtucon]

Lift 1/2 billion people out of poverty? How so. I realize it's a laudable goal but still I can't see how just having Internet access would do that. Yes people could get online educational access but where's the revenue stream supposed to come? There has to be infrastructure supporting this as well. Call me jaded but I don't think in and of itself would get rid of poverty.

Re:laudable but..

[ThosLives]

Yes, this. And it's not even a question of "where's the revenue stream supposed to come" - it's more a question of "from where is the actual real wealth (e.g., food, material, new manufactured items, etc.) supposed to come?"

Internet access can only facilitate information transfer. It doesn't directly increase manufacturing output, it doesn't fix broken property ownership laws, and doesn't really remove barriers to entry to wealth-producing activities. (It does reduce barriers to entry to many service activities, but you can't eat, live in, wear, or use services to power your machines.)

Despots Control Those Countries

[kenwd0elq]

Baloney. The 4+ billion people who don't already have internet access are primarily peasant farmers who are struggling to feed themselves, much less add anything to their national (or even local) economies. They don't have the tools or the knowledge nor the willingness to learn anything that would allow them to jump to first-world levels of productivity. In most places, they have neither reliable electrical power nor reliable potable water, and those folks need clean water a WHOLE lot more than they need internet access.

Probably half of those people would never be ALLOWED to connect to the internet, even if it were possible to provide access. Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, many of the impoverished African kleptocracies... which of those governments would ever allow their subjects any information about a better way of life?

Re:Despots Control Those Countries

[shawn2772]

Baloney. The 4+ billion people who don't already have internet access are primarily peasant farmers who are struggling to feed themselves

And the Internet would give them access to information that would enable their farms to be more productive, and information that would enable them to understand market pricing so they wouldn't be ripped off by middlemen when they sell their surplus, among many, many other benefits.

much less add anything to their national (or even local) economies.

Increasing the productivity of farms will add to local, and even national, economies.

They don't have the tools or the knowledge nor the willingness to learn anything that would allow them to jump to first-world levels of productivity.

There's no need for them to jump to first-world levels of productivity. Just increasing their own productivity by 20% will make huge differences.

In most places, they have neither reliable electrical power nor reliable potable water, and those folks need clean water a WHOLE lot more than they need internet access.

To get power and clean water, what they mostly need is to increase productivity and therefore income enough that they have the capital needed for those sorts of improvements. The Internet can help them do that.

Pretty much

[Sycraft-fu]

People who think that the really poor need Internet need to go see what "really poor" is actually like in the world. That is what happened with the Gates Foundation. Originally they were thinking along the lines of tech for 3rd world countries since both the Gates' are techies. So a perhaps apocryphal story but likely true is that Gates visited an African village and got shown their prized possession: A single light connected to their single power line. He realized then that what these people needed was things like refrigeration, not computers.

If you look at what the foundation does it matches that. While in the US they worry about things like emergency response, global libraries and so on in African they worry about things like agricultural development and vaccination. People don't have time to worry about higher level needs like access to global information if they are dying of disease and starvation. You have to deal with the more fundamental problems first.

A good basic map of this concept is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The idea is basically that humans have multiple levels of needs, but not all are equal. We spend our effort meeting the lower level ones and only once they are satisfactorily met do we spend much time on the higher ones.