RSSUS and other 'advanced nations' trail in cell phone use
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published April 6, 2009, 5:05 PM
Denmark, Norway, and the US took the top three spots in the World Economic Forum's latest Global Information Technology Report. Rounding out the top ten were Singapore, Switzerland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Netherlands, and Canada, in that order.
Meanwhile, mobile phone penetration has boomed in developing countries in places like Africa and Latin America, "helping them to compensate for an often underdeveloped and flawed fixed telephone infrastructure and offering a promising tool to increasingly lift their citizens out or poverty and improve the efficiency of their markets and economies," said the just released report for 2008-2009.
"The total number of mobile telephone subscribers in the developing world is more than twice that of advanced economies."
The reasons behind growing mobile phone use in developing countries include the decreasing cost of mobile phones; the relative ease of deploying mobile infrastructure as opposed to landline phones; a "more liberal regulation of mobile service provision" in most countries, favoring competition; and the possibilities of sharing mobile phones and buying pre-paid cards.
Aside from mobile phone use, the Cisco-sponsored report also considered PC penetration, broadband speeds, and Internet access, for example. However, a number of other factors were also taken into account in the World Economic Forum's highly complex formula for assessing "network readiness."
The United States, which jumped from fourth to third place overall this year, got high marks for its "efficient market environment;" network infrastructure; large pool of scientists and engineers; top-ranked research institutions; innovative business structure; and heavy exports of high-tech products. The US also landed number two among all nations for numbers of utility patents.
Yet on "a less positive note, the relative mediocre rankings registered [by the US] for the burden of government regulation (50th) and tax rate (68th), [among] others, point to the presence of red tape and inefficiencies in the country's business environment," according to the World Economic Forum.
"The quality of the general regulatory framework, at 19th, is another area of concern, notably with regard to the effectiveness of law making (33rd), the efficiency of the legal framework to settle disputes (28th), the protection of property rights (26th), and the independence of the judiciary (23rd)."
The reason is simple!
Look at the history of the adoption and implimentation of the technology!
More advanced countries have a larger landline infrastructure. Cell technology allowed for greater coverage without the establishment of an ubiquitous wired infrastructure - featuring greater coverage at less cost, but also at the expense of less services and reliability.
This entire issue is a red herring.
These same idiots would champion a country if they simply gave CB radios or the $50 Motorola walkie talkies to everyone. LOL!
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|i think that the real reason why mobile phones are up in developing countries, is that they are disposible tools that are ideally suited for covert, terroristic and other fraudulant uses.
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|Gee, I want some of what ever they're on. Government regulation? Isn't the destruction of our governing bodies oversite and lack of ability to properly prosecute and hold people responsible for their actions the reason the world has gotten where it is today? Tax Rate? How many corporations in this country actually pay taxes? When it is their property and constant whining about how they have to be able to do whatever they want, at the government's expense? Yet they have proven again and again that their creative accounting processes allows for millions of dollars of bonuses to ineffective leadership? Just so they can follow the coddled ways of a communist country that covers up anything bad that goes wrong? Spin it, cover it up and bury it so it never sees the light of day again is the communist way! By trying to poison our children, our pets and subversively destroy our way of life. We can thank our last paranoid schizophrenic for the destruction of our judiciary, they just stood in his way of his greater scheme, don't worry it'll get better after you take a shower.
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