| Factors which create the Digital Divide - Economic | |||
The factors that create the digital divide are...
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| Economic
Buying computers and connecting to the Internet costs money. Equipment and software has to be bought and subscription charges to ISPs paid. In homes, families with low incomes may not be able to afford this. In countries where food is short, people are not going to spend money on computers! In businesses and other organisations, costs will be greater because there needs to be many computers as well as a network connecting them. Only large and prosperous companies will be able to afford this. Broadband access to the Internet will be needed for large networks and this will be more expensive.
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ISP = Internet
Service Provider.
1999 : UN Secretary General Kofi Anan warned of the danger of excluding the world's poor from the information revolution. |
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| In schools and colleges,
governments need to award grants to help with costs and training. In
poorer countries governments are unable to do this.
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In the UK, all schools and public libraries are connected to the Internet. | ||
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Some countries are too poor to be able to build the communications
infrastructure needed to allow homes and businesses to
connect to the Internet.
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