World Dialogue on Regulation

Communications capability profiles

All countries are working towards enhancing their citizens’ access to modern communications technology. Rapid technological and market change mean that relevant objectives are constantly being raised, and are becoming more complex. For example:

• universal access to telephony still means a public phone per village (progressing from larger to smaller villages), but also encompasses phone sharing (whether on a commercial or informal basis).
• universal telephony service still means a private  phone per household (progressing from higher income to lower income households), but telephony now often includes text messaging, which matters more to some users than voice calls.
• universal internet access still means a public access point per central place* (progressing from higher order to lower order central places), but data rates are now a vital consideration, with broadband the new norm, and internet via mobile phone is making a growing contribution.

The relevant targets are increasingly inter-related: for example, public phone targets might be relaxed if high private phone take-up were achieved.

Important aspects that are not always monitored include:

• how far actual use of these facilities is encouraged (or deterred) by call or session pricing;
• people’s motivation and capacity to make positive use of internet, where public access is available (which in turn depends both on appropriate content (eg using local languages) and on their education/training/confidence).

Presenting a reasonably simple yet accurate overview of a country’s situation in all these dimensions, to permit a sensible assessment of needs and priorities, gets ever more challenging. Attempts to meet the challenge include indexes (like the Digital Opportunity Index) which average achievement across many dimensions to present a single simple number; and spider diagrams which represent several dimensions on a par with each other, stressing their independence.

The over-arching objective of all these endeavours is not actually to provide technology access, but to enable people to communicate. Individuals usually acquire capabilities progressively, in keeping both with growing technology availability and their own patterns of learning and behaviour change. So another way to represent progress could be through a communication capability profile, which estimates the percentage of the population** with increasing capability levels. An example six-level cumulative capability scale is shown below.

Level 1 capability    To make voice calls in an emergency
Level 2 capability    Level 1 and to make routine voice calls
Level 3 capability    Level 2 and to receive messages
Level 4 capability    Level 3 and to make and receive voice calls frequently
Level 5 capability    Level 4 and sometimes to use internet
Level 6 capability    Level 5 and to use internet frequently

Terms like ‘emergency’, ‘routine’ and ‘frequent’ would need to be defined in terms of local social norms. Some such local reference seems to be inescapable, and could use  the idea of exclusion placing people at a social and economic disadvantage (related to the EU principle that the scope of universal service should be limited to services which have become essential for social and economic inclusion.)

Because each capability level builds on the previous one, the percentages would necessarily decrease as the capability levels increase, as in the example profile below.

Especially when compared with other countries’ profiles, the profile should provoke discussion on UA/US programmes and priorities eg resources for internet or phones catering for people with disabilities, versus more public phones or more wireless coverage.

The percentages could be estimated through direct surveys, or, as in this example, derived from measured availability of facilities and so on (details provided below).

There are a lot of questionable assumptions in this example, and in reality one would probably want many more factors, possibly measured in more detail (eg regionally rather than nationally). The point is to end up with a simple yet meaningful representation of a complex reality.

Compared with indexes and spider diagrams, the capability profile idea is founded in people rather than things, and stresses the interdependence of the factors, and especially their cumulative effects.

Notes:
* In geography theory, a Central Place is a settlement which provides one or more services for the population living around it. Simple basic services (e.g. grocery stores) are said to be of low order while specialized services (e.g. universities) are said to be of high order. Having a high order service implies there are low order services around it, but not vice versa. Settlements which provide low order services are said to be low order settlements. Settlements that provide high order services are said to be high order settlements.

** Perhaps, of the population over a certain age (say 15 years or 10 years).

 Basis for example profile

* Alternatives could be ‘within x hours journey’, ‘within normal weekly journey’ etc.