Stories from Abroad

Australia is backing the purchase of mobile networks in six Pacific countries, a move that foreign-policy experts say is designed to block a military rival from buying the strategically important assets. The government said its export-finance arm agreed to provide $1.33 billion in funding to support the $1.6 billion purchase by Telstra Corp, Australia’s biggest communications provider, of the networks in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Nauru, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu.

Twitter has admitted it amplifies more tweets from rightwing politicians and news outlets than content from leftwing sources. The company examined tweets from elected officials in seven countries – the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. It also studied whether political content from news organisations was amplified on Twitter, focusing primarily on US news sources such as Fox News, the New York Times and BuzzFeed.

European Union countries will delay a key target of finalizing new rules hitting tech platforms by the spring of 2022, now saying they aim to reach a deal “as soon as possible” ahead of a leaders’ summit on October 21. The EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are two heavily debated pieces of legislation unveiled in 2020 by the European Commission that seek to curb the power of Big Tech. The Digital Markets Act seeks to curb anti-competitive behavior, while the Digital Services Act would regulate online content.

Due to rapid technological changes, governments in developing countries have paid special attention to sustainability. However, understanding insights into the sustainability of telecentres remains an open question (Editor's note: telecentres are public places where people can access computers, the Internet, and other digital technologies). This paper aims to fill this gap. We conducted a case study analyzing the sustainability of telecentres in Vietnam.

For many, the digital divide is the gap between who has access to broadband infrastructure or who does not. But a truer definition is the gap between who's actually using our most powerful communications tools and who is not. Using this broader measure and examining use around the world, we see that women are being left offline. And this gender gap costs everyone.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocates $65 billion to broadband infrastructure spending, with approximately $47 billion of this dedicated to building networks.

The China World Internet Conference, also known as the Wuzhen Summit, is a state-run conference where bigwigs in China's tech industry used to gather, party and tout their grand ideas and growth strategies. The conference, in its eighth year, has reliably offered a look at Beijing's particular vision of global internet governance and digital sovereignty.

Ofcom, the media and telecommunications regulator for the United Kingdom, has introduced a new service to make it easier for customers to switch broadband supplier to get a better deal. Ofcom hopes that the new process, One Touch Switch, will encourage people to seek out better deals after research found that more than two-fifths of people were put off switching broadband suppliers because of the hassle.

Efforts to close the rural/urban digital divide in Canada have reached new heights in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and “stay-at-home” policies. Yet the extent to which the rural/urban digital divide extends to pricing and demand for broadband services is not well understood. Using a dataset of more than 4700 residential survey responses from southern Ontario, Canada, we assess the disparity in pricing and willingness to pay for broadband across rural and urban households.