World Dialogue on Regulation

A new draft is available of the paper Variations on the expenditure in communications in developing countries: A synthesis of the evidence from Albania, Mexico, Nepal and South Africa (2000-2003). The author is Sebastian Ureta of the Media and Communications Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

From the introduction

In the analysis and debates about the so-called ‘information society’ and its impacts on developing societies throughout the world there is usually an excess of generalities and speculation about the concrete effects that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have on the everyday lives of their people. Frequently, the discussion and analysis are based on very general statistics on the national number of computers or total figures for web pages, mobile phones or wireless hotspots in a specific area or for a particular group of users. Even though this information is useful, a more grounded analysis of the concrete place that the use of these technologies has in the everyday life of the inhabitants of these societies is needed, in order to more deeply understand the place that ICTs occupy and how they can contribute to improving social inclusion, especially for the low income population.

In order to advance in the direction of a more ‘micro’ analytical approach to the reality of ICTs use in this paper – which is part of the output of the project “Telecom Demand: Measures for Improving Affordability” - the expenditure on communications by households in four developing countries is examined: Albania, Mexico, Nepal and South Africa over the period 2000 to 2003. The relative amount of household income that families devote to communications is analysed for these countries first separately and then comparatively. The data for the analysis come from household expenditure surveys conducted by the central statistical agencies of the countries under study.