On Thursday 31 March 2022 at 3pm-4pm CEST (13:00-14:00 UTC) the World Data Lab (WDL) in collaboration with the Internet Society Foundation presents a webinar ‘Which are the most Internet poor countries in the world?‘ to launch the Internet Poverty Index. WDL estimates reveal that globally over 1.39 billion people, or around 17.8% of the world population, currently live in Internet poverty. By defining internet affordability, quality, and quantity thresholds, the estimates of global Internet poverty can finally be assessed.
SPEAKERS Dr. Homi Kharas, Co-Founder / Sr. Economic Advisor, World Data Lab Dr. Katharina Fenz, Sr. Data Scientist, World Data Lab Prof. Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, Vienna University of Economic and Business Ravi Shankar Chatuverdi, Director of Research, Digital Planet, Tufts University Sarah Armstrong, Executive Director, Internet Society Foundation
MODERATOR Shayna Robinson, Program Officer, Internet Society Foundation
Today, Wednesday December 30 2020, at 7:00pm EST (00:00 UTC) in the fifth instalment of the Internet Society Livestreaming‘s ‘12 Days of Streams 2020 highlights, we feature two presentations from the fifth Intercommunity call in 2020, a ‘Special Edition’ with the theme ‘Stories of Resilience‘. In the first presentation Jane Coffin, Senior Vice President, Internet Growth reflects on the year’s progress in expanding connectivity efforts. In the second, Joseph Bishi, Project Director, Murambinda Works talks about his experiences building and sustaining a community network in Zimbabwe.
On Tuesday 5 May 2020, at 12:00 UTC, the World Summit on the Information Society Forum 2020 (WSIS+15) presents ‘The importance of low tech internet lifelines in times of crisis‘. This panel is the 7th of the ongoing virtual interactiveTalkX series. Speakers: Sebastien Codeville, CEO of KaiOS; Sonia Jorge, Executive Director of Alliance for Affordable Internet; Asim Zia Alam, CEO, WebDoc; and Dr. Jessica Rothenberg Aalami, CEO, Cell-Ed. Participation is via Zoom, with closed human captions available.
Today Monday September 29 2016 Quartz and Mastercard present Bridging the Digital Divide – an evening discussion surrounding the energy and dialogue of the United Nations General Assembly around financial and economic inclusion. SPEAKERS: Mark Latonero, Fellow, Data & Society Research Institute & Research Director, Center On Communication Leadership And Policy, USC Annenberg School; Olivia White, Associate Principal, Mckinsey & Company; Shamina Singh, President, Mastercard Center For Inclusive Growth; and Kevin Delaney, Co-President And Editor In Chief, Quartz. The event will be webcast live via the Quartz Livestream Channel.
Today Monday May 2 2016 New America NYC will present a panel discussionFAST AND FREE : New York’s Vision for Public Wi-Fi Everywhere at Civic Hall in NYC. Noting New York City’s growing dependence on Wi-Fi, in particular through new initiatives such as the LinkNYCfranchise to turn phone booths into hotspots, and the NYCEDC’s RISE : NYC resiliency initiative, New America is specifically concerned about possible congestion if LTE-U is broadly implemented by telcos. After a technical introduction by OTI’s Michael Calabrese, Maya Wiley of the NYC Mayor’s Office will deliver a keynote on the policy and planning aspects. The Panel: Dmytro Pokhylko – Vice President, NYC Economic Development Corporation; Colin O’Donnell – Chief Innovation Officer, Intersection; Andrew Afflerbach – CEO and Director of Engineering, CTC Technology & Energy; Chris Szymanski – Director of Product Marketing & Government Affairs, Broadcom; & Greta Byrum, Acting Director, Resilient Communities Program, New America. The event will be webcast live on the Internet Society Livestream Channel.
Today, Wednesday November 5 2014 Quartz will be holding a full day conference The Next Billion – one of a global series exploring the next generation of technologies and strategies that will help companies and individuals around the globe prepare for the next billion internet users to come online. Speakers include representatives from Microsoft, SmartThings, goTenna, Harvard Law School, the Ford Foundation, and Al Jazeera America. The sold out event will be webcast live via Livestream.
October 20th 2014 marked the official launch of Next Century Cities a new, city-to-city collaboration that supports community leaders across the country as they seek to ensure that all have access to fast, affordable, and reliable Internet. The event included a video keynote from FCC Chair Tom Wheeler, a panel of city leaders moderated by Susan Crawford, and another of city tech officers. Audio/video is below.
The goal of Internet.org – an initiative launched in August 2013 by Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung — is to connect the 4.4 billion people who currently lack access to the Internet, but a mission on such a large scale is not without barriers, and a study released Wednesday by McKinsey & Co., Offline and Falling Behind: Barriers to Internet Adoption, examines those barriers.
The study broke the barriers into four categories — incentives, low incomes and affordability, user capability and infrastructure — and found that:
3.4 billion of the 4.4 billion people without Internet access are located in 20 countries.
1.1 billion to 2.8 billion of them are outside the range of existing mobile networks.
920 million of them are illiterate.
Women in developing countries are 25 percent less likely to be connected than men.
The report’s seven key findings::
Over the past decade, the global online population grew to just over 2.7 billion people, driven by five trends: the expansion of mobile network coverage and increasing mobile Internet adoption, urbanization, shrinking device and data-plan prices, a growing middle class and the increasing utility of the Internet.
The online population is expected to grow by another 500 million to 900 million by 2017, meaning that 4.2 billion people will still be offline.
Some 75 percent of the offline population is concentrated in 20 countries, and those people are disproportionately rural, low-income, elderly, illiterate and female.
The offline population faces barriers to Internet adoption spanning four categories: incentives, low incomes and affordability, user capability and infrastructure.
McKinsey & Co. found a systematically positive and, in some cases, large correlation between barrier categories and Internet penetration rates.
Some 2 billion of the offline population of 4.4 billion live in 10 countries that face challenges across all four barrier categories, and 1.1 billion are in countries dominated by a single barrier category (more details below).
Current initiatives, forthcoming innovations and lessons from countries that have made headway are cause for optimism.
McKinsey & Co. also broke down where countries fell in terms of barriers to connecting everyone to the Internet:
High barriers across the board: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tanzania. Medium to high barriers: Egypt, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Medium barriers, greatest challenges in incentives: China, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Medium barriers, greatest challenges in low incomes and affordability: Colombia, Mexico,Brazil, South Africa and Turkey. Low barriers across the board: Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the U.S.
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On March 16-18 2014 the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) held its 2014 Legislative Conference. In a session on March 17, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler and FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel addressed the education leaders on E-Rate reform. In pursuit of President Obama’s ConnectED Initiative which includes a commitment to connect 99 percent of all students to high-speed broadband within 5 years, last July the FCC launched the reform effort aka E-Rate 2.0. The proceeding has to date garnered 1800+ comments. In her remarks on Monday Commissioner Rosenworcel Chair Wheeler emphasized the urgency of reform noting that, currently, E-Rate does not even cover W-Fi. He said the FCC had identified $2 Billion of funding to spend over the next two years, solely on improving schools and other anchor institutions’ Internet connections. He announced the formation of a USF Special Strike Force to insure “there is adherence to the rules and the people’s money is wisely spent.” Video is below. Closed captions are available.
On a brief visit to NYC civic technology leader Steven Clift, a White House Champion of Change for Open Government, at short notice set up a presentation – New Voices – The Civic Technology and Open Government Opportunity at the UNDP offices on December 18 2013. At issue is whether growing open government and civic technology will ironically lead to greater concentration of power among fewer, often similar voices or will more open government and community engagement online lead to better government decisions, stronger communities and more problem-solving? Clift highlighted myth-busting research from the Pew Internet and American Life project and shared unique highlights from E-Democracy’s BeNeighbors.org initiative that is designed to foster local neighborhood engagement online that builds bridges across income, race, and native-born and immigrant communities. Video is below:
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