The digital divide

The political world recognises that Internet connectivity has become an essential utility like water, electricity, fuel or gas. Every household, rich or poor, should have the possibility to watch what is going on in the world (television) and should be able to retrieve the information he requires and interact with others (internet).

You can argue that many people don't use the internet in an appropriate way, but that doesn't matter here. Everyone should have access to content that may be enriching and useful to him and this access to information content is an essential precondition for personal development, welfare and well-being.

It appears that 60% of the world's population doesn't have broadband access to the internet yet. There can be many reasons, but very often these people live in remote and underdeveloped regions. In many cases, these regions don't have the required tele-communications equipment and cabling in place. In that case, satellites combined with satellite ground terminals are the fastest and easiest way to open broadband connections to the rest of the world.

SES and O3B networks ("the Other 3 Billion people") are organisations that are working on bridging this digital divide.

A nice example can be found on the SES blog: Satellite TV in the highest village of Europe.

See also my blog: "Africa, something has changed".