Internet access is both a human right and a business opportunity

Access to the internet is a basic human right, the United Nations declared in 2016. But, as the Covid-19 crisis has highlighted, it is a right that is still denied to billions of people at a time when connectivity has never been more important. For professional classes in rich countries with good internet access and the ability to work from home, the crisis has been made infinitely easier thanks to Zoom video calls and Amazon deliveries. It has been a far more precarious existence for those who have manual jobs and children at home with no internet access. Across the world some 1.2bn students have been kept away from school or college. That digital divide runs between countries. Wiring up the rest of the world and developing online training and education will require close collaboration between the private and the public sectors. But it also needs governments to ensure fair rules of the game and fiercer competition between private sector internet providers to cut the excessively high costs of broadband access in many parts of the world, including the US.