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CHAPTER 4
Sectoral policies
Making the internet
universal, affordable, open,
and safe
Access to mobile phones is close to universal, and
prices are falling in most countries, thanks to policies
based on market competition, private participation,
and light-touch regulation. But today’s digital economy
also requires universal access to the internet—at
broadband speeds. First-generation policies for the
information and communication technology (ICT)
sector, aimed at universal access and affordability,
have proved successful for phone service, and supply-side
policies should also work well for the internet.
But with more than half the world still offline, the benefits
of the internet are unevenly distributed. Nextgeneration
policies must also focus on demand-side
issues of digital literacy, as well as privacy, cybersecurity,
and internet governance, where a global consensus
has yet to emerge.
In the last decade, all countries have benefited
from the rapid spread of mobile communication
networks. But only 15 percent of the world’s citizens
have access to affordable high-speed internet, 1 and
the prices for service vary enormously. This reflects
policy failures in some countries, such as regulatory
capture, troubled privatizations, inefficient spectrum
management, excessive taxation of the sector,
or monopoly control of international gateways. To
achieve better development outcomes, governments
need to address these failures through open consultative
policy-making processes involving the industry
and users.
Developing countries are following a different
route from developed ones. Most member-countries
of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) benefited from initial state-led
investment in their fixed telephone infrastructure,
followed by private participation, and added mobile
and internet networks later. But developing countries
are jumping straight to mobile networks, built by the
private sector. This may leave gaps in the backbone
infrastructure, especially in rural areas, possibly
requiring investment through public-private partnerships
(PPPs) for the full benefits of high-speed
networks to be enjoyed by all.
While availability, accessibility, and affordability
remain concerns, the challenges facing internet stakeholders
today are as much about how networks are
used (demand) as how they are built (supply). Global
interconnectedness introduces new vulnerabilities
in areas where coordination mechanisms are weak,
still evolving, or based on nongovernment models.
Threats to cybersecurity are undermining confidence
in the internet and increasing the costs to businesses
and governments, resulting in economic losses as
well as higher security spending. For privacy and
data protection, different countries are taking quite
different approaches, making it harder to develop
global services. Ensuring safe and secure access will
require greater international collaboration based on a
multistakeholder model.
Converting connectivity into digital dividends
will work best where an open access internet ecosystem
allows content creation and applications development
to thrive. ICT clusters tend to form naturally,
and governments do not need to intervene to create
them. But they can help clusters along and avoid stifling
growth unintentionally through high tariffs or
restrictions on openness. Most countries have found
it useful to develop national ICT sector strategies for
broadband, for e-government, and for local content.
The process of developing these strategies, through
multistakeholder consultations, can be just as useful
as the strategies themselves—and ensures that targets
are realistic and actionable. Policy challenges are
summarized in box 4.1.