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Theme 7: Cities and Regions, and Community
Empowerment in an Information Age |
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Number
of abstracts currently posted to this Theme: 1 |
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 Return
to List of Themes |
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(Last updated:
September 29th, 2005) |
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Commercial Telecentres and
strategies for bridging the digital divide in
urban areas of developing countries |
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Anikar
Michael Haseloff |
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University of Augsburg,
Germany |
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Asish
Saboo, President |
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Association of Public
Internet Providers (ApiAp), India |
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This paper will discuss the interesting role
commercial telecentres (often referred to as
cyber cafés, cyber kiosk etc.) could play
in ICT based urban development programs. In India
for example, commercial public access models
have mushroomed in the last few years in urban
areas, where they are heavily used and are an
important access place for more than 60 percent
of the urban Indian Internet users in general.
This paper will explore the potentials these
urban ICT access model could have on bridging
the digital divide especially for poor and marginalized
urban communities. The conclusions are drawn
on an empirical research in India and the findings
include recommendations for political and institutional
actions and programs, which could help to include
commercial telecentres in effective ICTD4D initiatives
for urban areas. |
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As it has been demonstrated in various successful
rural ICT projects, there is a variety of relevant
content and applications for poor and marginalized
communities, and the commercial telecentres could
help to spread applications and information to
marginalized urban communities. Subsidized Information
Kiosks could provide desperately needed information
for slum dwellers, could provide cheap training
for women from the lower classes or could support
school education for kids from low-income households. |
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We want to show, that the commercial sector
can learn valuable lessons from successful rural
ICT projects regarding content and applications
for marginalized communities but also, that government
and development organizations should recognize
commercial public access providers as important
access model and infrastructure for the delivery
of advanced services to marginalized urban communities. |
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