Only a few years ago I remember starting to develop my business and being frustrated with the lack of broadband coverage in the area I was living in in Ireland, especially as some of the development programmes I was attending required me to download from the Internet large presentations and audio files.
In fact one programme where I was a member of the teaching faculty made the decision to scale back their programme from being a webinar to being a teleseminar as so many people had problems not just with the technology platform being used but with broadband access.
It was interesting therefore to hear Martha Rotter who spoke about the 'Academy Mobile' programme within Microsoft at Saturday's PodCamp Ireland conference comment that the platform that they have enabled allows Microsoft employees to produce a podcast with just a phone call - just as we do for the 'Talking HR' new programme I am collaborating on with HR consultant Jon Ingham and my masterclasses for 'Biz Growth Live' both of which are recorded using a phone line and then.
Viviane Reding, EU Telecoms Commissioner responsible for Information Society and Media Social Networking in Europe comments that:
It is this Commission's policy objective to achieve broadband Internet for all Europeans by 2010.
From 2003-2007 broadband use in the EU tripled to 36% of households.
However, 7% of the EU's population are still not connected (increasing to 30% in rural areas). And there are significant differences between diferent countries from 100% of the population being able to access broadband in Denmark, Luxembourg and Belgium, yet only 40% of the population in Romania (25% in rural areas) can access broadband.
Under the EU Telecoms rules, the view is that broadband access is critical for social inclusiveness and they wish to ensure that 'basic communication services of good quality are always available at an affordable price, even if the market does not provide them under normal commercial conditions.'
Use of the internet across the EU is reported to be at 4 per cent of EU households using the Iinternet, 36 per cent of which are on broadband (corresponding to 20% of the total EU population).
A report in the Spring of 2008 commented that almost 40 per cent of European citizens still do not send emails or know how to use search enginges such as Google. They reported that the percentage of what they termed 'Internet illiterates' ranges from 69 per cent in Romania to 13 per cent in Denmark and the Netherlands.
It's easy for those of us who have access to the Internet and especialy broadband to forget that not everyone has equality of access.
This data is also great reminder that we need to understand our audience if we are making content, products and services available using the web and that we need to provide our content in a variety of forms, repackaging it not just to meet the preferred learning style of our audience but also taking into account thier ability to easily connect with your information.
I'll be interested to see if the subject of broadband access is discussed in the 'Organise, Activate and Influence Conference' talking place on Saturday and facilitated by the European Commission in Ireland.
Traditional literacy challenges are now being replaced by digital illieracy challenges and surely it's the responsibility of all our governments to ensure that the 'digital divide' brought about be lack of access to the Internet does not create disadvantage or even discrimination for the citizens of their nations?
Link to original post