Internet connectivity ‘should be spread in every corner of the world’

Dubai: Primary proposal is to ensure the IT development sector focuses on deploying the broadband infrastructure, making the wires and wireless connections to enable each other connect to the internet and spread it in every corner of the world, a top US official told Gulf News.

“Even though mobile has penetrated in terms of subscriptions dramatically, in terms of actual human beings and particular in rural areas, we still have a huge deployment gap,” said Ambassador Daniel A. Sepulveda, the US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy.

Africa has a 16 per cent penetration rate for fixed and mobile internet connections while the rate for south-east Asia stands at 21 per cent.

There are a lot of other issues to be concerned about, but the primary issue is “internet connectivity.”

“Other proposals include ensuring that we have the information in place when natural or man-made disasters happen somewhere in the developing world, then the rest of the world can find the mechanisms to assist,” he said.

When natural disasters battered Haiti, “we did not know who to contact in order to get the rights of way, to put up new networks and move the regulations out of the way temporarily in order to get telecommunications up and running immediately,” Sepulveda said.

Private sector companies have to get authority in order to import equipment and all of these things quickly and ensure we don’t have to go through “lot of red tape” in order to get communication back up and running.

This is particularly important, he said, because the traditional disaster relief agencies haven’t seen information and communications technology as a “high priority” and it is, and it is not food, water or shelter.

“It is an enabler making all of the other things accessible to people and it is also an enabler for finding people,” he said.