Financial Express : Bridging the digital divide - WSIS and th...

It was decided to develop a composite ICT development index - Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) that can track the digital divide. The digital opportunity index is based on a common set of core indicators in three different clusters—Opportunity, Infrastructure and Utilisation

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Under the opportunity head there are three indicators—viz percentage of population covered by mobile telephony, Internet access tariff as a percentage of per capita income and mobile cellular tariff as a percentage of per capita income. Under the infrastructure head are proportions of household with fixed telephone, proportion of household with a computer, proportion of household with Internet access at home, mobile cellular subscriber per hundred inhabitants and mobile Internet subscriber per hundred inhabitants. Similarly under the utilisation head, the indicators are: proportion of individuals that have used the Internet, ratio of fixed broadband subscribers to total Internet subscribers and the ratio of mobile broadband subscribers to total mobile subscribers.

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verage DOI score worldwide as mentioned in the 2007 report is 0.40 up from 0.37 year earlier. The score ranges from 0.80 to 0.03. The highest DOI score has been earned by Republic of Korea, and the lowest score by Niger. India, with a DOI score of 0.31 has 124th position among 181 economies of the world.

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According to the report, the high-income group of countries comprises of about 55 nations, with 15.7% of global population and 80% of the world GDP. The upper middle-income group comprises of 39 countries with 9% of the global population with a 6.7% share of world GDP. Lower Middle Income group consisting of 54 countries with 38.3% world’s population and 10.1% of world GDP.

The low income group of 55 countries has 37% share of the world’s population and contributes only 3.2% to world GDP. It has been established by economists that a 10% penetration in mobile telephony gives rise to 1.5% growth in GDP of a country.

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