Equitable Access: People, Network, and Capabilities

This 12-page issue paper commissioned by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) begins by defining some key terms related to information and communication technology (ICT), and then seeks to place access issues within the overall context of communications policy, based on the premise that infrastructure alone is insufficient to achieve equitable access. It also raises a number of issues regarding capacity and capability, both of decision-makers and of consumers of communications services, arguing that more attention should be paid to demand-side (and often local) factors.

The term "access", in this document, means not simply the technical infrastructural connection to ICT, but meaningful or worthwhile access to services resulting from affordability, ease of use, and saliency - how the access adds value to the quality of life or livelihood of the user. Among the strategies included are the following:

• creating policies seeking to achieve an enabling environment - sector restructuring (such as privatisation and opening markets to foreign direct investment), liberalisation, pro-competitive regulation, and efforts to extend the geographical reach of existing networks (such as universal access strategies).
  
• building user capabilities.
  
• requiring policy-makers, regulators, and other stakeholders to think about supply and demand, infrastructure and services, national and local levels of provision, within a single, common frame of reference.
• requiring that common frame of reference to be carried through from policy to implementation - a more holistic view of the ICT sector.

As stated in the document, policy makers and regulators are the centre of decisions that can foster change - investment, interconnection, licensing - which impact the opportunity of citizens and businesses. Policy constraints include "lack of knowledge of market developments, the unpredictability of new technology, the potential impact of different regulatory approaches, and (sometimes) weak relationships with powerful actors in government and business." Improving policy maker and regulator capabilities, and those of industry actors in general, "to predict and innovate amidst change and uncertainty could do much to increase the pace of infrastructure deployment and maximise resulting social and economic returns."

A critical mass of business users, resulting in "a density of use beyond which adoption of new communications opportunities tends to accelerate", is needed. Three factors have aided in driving the "natural monopoly paradigm of network expansion": "Firstly, new technologies, particularly wireless, have drastically reduced the capital cost of network deployment. Secondly, they have enabled more services (old and new) to be delivered more affordably over existing networks, so increasing the revenue return on network investment. And thirdly, policy-makers and regulators now understand that service provision can be structurally separated from network ownership. Together, these factors have transformed the economics of communications networks and brought about unprecedented expansion into previously unserved areas." Though this strategy generally involves moving from a centre toward the underserved periphery, evidence from community networks suggests that it may be more cost-effective to build inwards from the periphery, creating periphery networks around local demand and alternative technologies.

According to the document, regulators and policy-makers need a stronger understanding of developments within the sector and the likely impact of decisions that they make, in order to foster innovation and experimentation, and to intervene assertively to ensure that innovation and experimentation are not constrained by network owners with substantial market power.

Two types of capability are cited as particularly important at a community level:

1. capabilities to tailor supply to local requirements, such as the micro-level retailing of services (availability of payphones, reselling of capacity on mobile phones); basic business skills and resources (to establish and profitably manage telecentres and other public access facilities); and the installation and maintenance skills required to keep such facilities online.
   
2. the acquisition of relevant skills, i.e., those skills required to access resources in ways which suit people’s own needs and offer them real worth, including not only literacy but also research skills - the ability to find relevant and applicable information.