Global Communications Newsletter

The growth rate of information communication technologies (ICT) in developing countries is accelerating. It is both socially and economically desirable to stay abreast of technological developments, and some newer technologies (e.g., wireless communication) have actually allowed developing countries to "leap-frog" past inadequate infrastructure. However, economic factors have caused the distribution of a new ICT infrastructure to be uneven. In rural areas development is very slow, and a new digital/broadband gap is increasing. The situation is similar to that in the developed world. In early 2009 it was estimated that 30 percent of the rural European population still have no broadband access. Today, there are very limited public data available on the development of the telecommunications infrastructure in urban and rural areas. In this article we present our research on urban-rural technological developments in Serbia. In principle, the research can be generalized to represent the situation in other developing countries.