[Wikimedia-l] ISOC, OECD, UNESCO: Relationship Between Local Content, Internet Development, and Access Prices

[Marcin Cieslak]

Hello everyone:

Internet Society, OECD and UNESCO have published a report:

The Relationship Between Local Content, Internet Development, and Access Prices

http://www.internetsociety.org/localcontent

http://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/The%20Relationship%20Between%20Local%20Content%2C%20Internet%20Development%2C%20and%20Access%20Prices.pdf

I think the report is worth reading (there are interesting
case studies there as well). Here are the main findings as posted
on the website:

MAIN FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS

1. Societies have a rich heritage and knowledge base that should be
recognised, recorded and shared for the benefit of people throughout
the world. 

Much of the world’s content remains inaccessible even to the local
population, not to mention at a broader level. There are many reasons
for the existence of this “content divide”.

2. The content that is most important to people is typically in their
own language and is relevant to the communities in which they live and
work.

These communities may be defined by their location, culture, language,
religion, ethnicity or area of interest and individuals may belong
to many communities at the same time. Further, communities evolve so
what is relevant will change over time. This relevant content is often
referred to as “local content”. The term community is used in a
broad way to include not only local professional communities (public and
private), but also non-professional content creators and users.

3. Technology can help support the recognition, creation, preservation,
dissemination and utilisation of local content and there have
been several important technological advancements in recent
history.

Technological developments such as the printing press, the
phonogram, telephony, radio, television, photocopying machines,
recording media, mobile phones and personal computers, among others,
have greatly increased our ability to create and disseminate content.

4. The Internet represents another historical advancement in the
development and dissemination of content. It has, first and foremost,
helped empower users as content creators.

The Internet has provided a platform for crowd-sourced content creation
and community-developed and peer-reviewed knowledge bases such as
Wikipedia. It has also allowed individuals to exercise greater choice
and control over the content they consume, in contrast to the limited
channels of traditional broadcasting. It plays a key role in all steps
from content creation to its distribution but perhaps its largest
contribution is the potential it gives to creators to disseminate
information their content widely and nearly instantaneously at a very
low cost.

5. Policy makers around the world in ministries of culture look for ways
promote the creation and preservation of cultural heritage, including
element that are tangible, oral and intangible. 

At the same time, policy makers in communication ministries focus on
ways to ensure that information and communication technologies and
services, such as Internet access, are available and accessible to the
population. This research confirms that the goals of these two important
government entities are intertwined.

6. This empirical research shows there is a strong correlation
between the development of network infrastructure and the growth of
local content, even after controlling for economic and demographic
factors.

The statistically significant relationship is evident using several
different measures of local content (the number of visible top-level
domains in use per country code, per capita; Wikipedia articles per
language per capita; and blogs per capita) and several measures of
Internet development (broadband penetration rates, autonomous systems
per capita, international bandwidth per capita and routed IPv4 addresses
per capita).

7. In addition, this research finds a significant relationship between
the development of international bandwidth and the price of local
Internet access.

The results indicate that more developed local Internet markets tend to
report lower international prices for bandwidth and vice versa: markets
with more intense international Internet traffic tend to report lower
local prices for Internet access. A similar relationship was detected
between the degree of development of local Internet networks and the
level of international prices in developing economies. In particular,
countries with a more developed local market also tend to report lower
prices for international Internet connections. This relationship is not
visible in developed economies that tend to have much more developed
Internet infrastructure.

-- 
Marcin Cieślak