Tackling the Divide on the Ground

ICT can be very empowering. Simply putting a community IT centre or an IT kiosk in a central point of a village can provide masses of people with access to wider information and communication through internet, like email, and mobile telephony. These facilities can then be used to educate people and change people's lives in these villages.

Broadcasting

Digital broadcasting is a great example of both empowering technology and the political barriers that may stall the elimination of the digital divide. Satellite broadcasting enables geographically remote areas to receive important news and information. This would have been an impossible task to achieve before satellite broadcasting started. Therefore this has helped people like farmers receive information about their crops and therefore benefited a lot of people in these rural areas. Before this satellite broadcasting was introduced in rural areas villagers used a slow and unreliable internet source to communicate. They now have access to high internet speeds and quality, and also a wider range to communicate. This provides people living in this rural areas access to better education and entertainment.

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By using wireless base stations the internet access can reach players which it couldn't of done before hand. For example with the wireless base stations the people who live in areas deep inside jungles and mountains will have internet access and will be able to communicate through the internet.

Using satellite broadcasting can also be seen as a major problem in some areas in the Middle Eastern and North African regions. This is because the digital broadcasting will enable people to have easy access to digital television, and this is what is seen a the problem. This is because digital television allows people to have an easy access to western values, which are not seen as a good thing universally, and particularly in religious areas.

Mobile Phones

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Since rural areas in places like Pakistan and Bangladesh introduced the cellular or mobile phone, life in these rural areas has improved drastically. The main reason for this is because the use of mobile phones has made communicating over long distances much easier and faster because of the wireless connections it has introduced. Mobile phones have been extremely popular in these areas, as they are very useful pieces of equipment and make everyday life easier for the citizens in these areas. In April 2004 oneworld.net reported "mobile phone users will double next year, outnumbering fixed-line customers for the first time." This shows that the use of mobile phones in these rural areas has been very useful and important for people. The report then goes on to say "this is marking a new era of communications in the poverty stricken nation" This statement maybe suggests that these more rural areas of countries are catching up, in regards to technology, with the rest of the country or region.

Governance

The level of technology some poorer countries have to use is mainly because of the government. This is because the state is often the main or even only telecommunications provider in poor countries and they charge monopoly prices for the services it provides, which prevents other organisations from providing competitive services. There are also sometimes high tariffs on importing high technology, and this can make it difficult for the poorer countries to get hold of the more advanced technology. This is because the country will not have enough money to pay for technology so the people who live there will not be able to use it.  The is a problem the government to deal with and the government can struggle a lot with this problem. Successful methods of dealing with this problem include setting up as a free trade zone. In the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Internet City has been set up like this. This method is used to encourage ICT investment throughout the Middle East, Asia and Africa. On the occasion this strategy uses Dubai as a hub.