The future for infra-connected countries

The digital divide is the condition that disrupts the right to equality in terms of access to digital resources, affecting 50% of the world’s population, says Gustavo Copelmayer. We can assure that the states are working to reduce this gap, however, it requires multiple solutions. At this stage of human development, it is a vital need for human connection.

In fact, “connectivity, understood as broadband service with adequate speed and the possession of access devices, conditions the right to health, education and work, at the same time that it can increase socioeconomic inequalities” (ECLAC, 2020, p. 3). “Currently, the world is characterized by a huge gap between the under-connected countries and the hyper-digitized countries,” says Gustavo Copelmayer.

It is not only a problem of access to digital technologies, but it is associated with unequal opportunities to acquire and/or improve the skills required to give meaning to access to technology. The limited access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) generates difficulties for education, personal, professional, work, family and social development.

This limitation goes beyond the technological problem, it is directly linked to socioeconomic and political factors. Hence, the depressed areas of large cities and rural areas without access or with poor connection or high costs to telecommunications services or the Internet, are deepening the internal inequalities of the countries because it affects fundamental rights such as health, education, culture, security, freedom of expression and mobility, among others.

Likewise, in the business world, during this year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the aforementioned gap has been evidenced. Many manufacturers of goods and service providers have found themselves in the extreme of having to close, temporarily or permanently, due to, among other factors, the infra connectivity or scarce access to the digitization of their processes, concludes Gustavo Copelmayer.