ict in agriculture - Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation

SECTION 1 — OVERVIEW OF ICT IN AGRICULTURE: OPPORTUNITIES, ACCESS, AND CROSS-CUTTING THEMES 17
T ABLE 2.1: Characteristics of Universal Access and Universal Service
ASPECT UNIVERSAL ACCESS UNIVERSAL SERVICE
Availability Focused coverage Blanket coverage
Public access (e.g., at a pay phone or telecenter) Private service on demand
Free emergency calls Free emergency calls
Accessibility Walking distance, convenient locations and hours Simple and speedy subscription
Inclusively designed premises (e.g., for wheelchair users); inclusively Inclusively designed terminals and services (e.g., for blind or deaf
designed terminals or available assistance (e.g., for the blind or deaf) people)
Assistance from an attendant Assistance through the terminal (e.g., by making calls or viewing help
pages for the web)
Adequate quality of service (e.g., having few failed call attempts) Reasonable quality of service (e.g., having few dropped calls)
Affordability Options of cash and card payment Cost of average monthly usage is a small percentage of monthly GNI
per capita
Options of cash and card payment Options of cash, card, and electronic payment
Payment per use (e.g., for a single call or message or an hour of
Internet access)
Flat rate, bundles of services or low monthly subscription fee
Source: Dymond e t al. 2010.
FIGURE 2.1: Access to ICT Infrastructure, Appliances, in Services and the Access Rainbow
Source: Authors, following Clement and Shade 2000.
2000), depicted in figure 2.1, to unde rstand access to ICTs.
The Access Rainbow Framework demonstrates the multifaceted
nature of access to ICTs and captures the socio-technical
architecture instrumental to it. The framework goes beyond a
mechanical understanding of ICT access by including enablers
of ICT such as locally relevant content, ICT literacy, proximal ICT
use, 4 and social mechanisms for governing ICT use.
The Access Rainbow provides a framework for discussing
access to ICT infrastructure, appliances, and services.
The “carriage facilities” layer is a physical technology layer
4 ICT use intermediated by skilled users in the rural community.
ECONOMIC AND SECTOR WORK
Governance
Literacy/social facilitation
Service/access provision
Content/services
Software tools
Devices
Carriage facilities
Access to services
Access to appliances
Access to infrastructure
consisting of installed network capacity, network connectivity,
and interoperability standards. In this module, this layer is
interpreted as access to ICT infrastructure. Access to ICT appliances
is captured by the physical layer of ICT hardware devices
and the logical layer of software tools on these devices. With
its twofold (hardware and software) nature, access to ICT appliances
links the supply of ICT infrastructure with the provision
of services targeted at end users. Access to ICT services is
a more amorphous concept, consisting of: (1) the ready availability
of content (resources), fulfilling users’ roles as citizens,
producers, and consumers; (2) the ready availability (to those
who are not experts in the technology) of network access and
appropriate support services through commercial vendors;