Broadband and ICT Access and Use by Households and Individuals

BROADBAND AND ICT ACCESS AND USE BY HOUSEHOLDS AND INDIVIDUALS
[SOURCE: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development]
The Internet, and its most recent expression, broadband, is now part of everyday life for a billion people, but billions are still excluded from this major technological advance. This paper focuses on how ICTs, the Internet and broadband diffusion and use among households and individuals are sources of significant change and how these technologies have, and will continue to have, major economic and social impacts. The indicators and discussion presented in this paper shed light on selected areas of household and individual use. Other areas such as consumer-to-consumer electronic commerce, e-government, the blurring frontier between private and work life due to ICT, and associated impacts on production, organization and productivity, are not the focus of this analysis. Policy responses to reduce the emerging use divide need to be wider than simply focusing on ICT related issues. The remaining digital access divide and increasing digital use divide are linked to other kinds of social and economic divides as well as to locational factors. Efficient and creative use of ICT is one of the keys for innovation, organizational change, growth and employment, and the emerging usage divide needs to be taken into account when devising policies to increase the benefits of broadband and ICTs. When investing in and preparing for the future, one of the key questions is: what kind of knowledge society are schools and educational institutions preparing for? More broadly, what kind of educational and training processes should be encouraged to close the second level digital divide / digital use divide?
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/44/11/39869349.pdf