Is There a Mobile Broadband "Divide" That Cannot be Fixed Rapidly by the Market?

Policymakers, it might be argued, should try to solve real problems, not imagined problems.

Likewise, policymakers and regulators sometimes should be encouraged to avoid mucking about when key problems already are being resolved.

Sometimes, "doing nothing," or perhaps "not getting in the way" is the right course of action. That would seem to be the case for global mobile broadband services, despite the
contention of some International Telecommunication Union researchers that a big problem exists.

“As the broadband revolution unfolds, large segments of the world’s population are being left
behind,” the International Telecommunications Union argues. 


Oddly, other ITU data suggests that mobile broadband adoption is growing rapidly.



The ITU rightly suggests that “over five billion people have never experienced the Internet or have only experienced it through public or shared access, let alone experienced the Internet through broadband access.”



But the ITU also has said that a third of the world’s seven billion people now use the Internet. Over the last five years (2006 to 2011), developing countries have increased their share of the world’s total number of Internet users from 44 percent in 2006 to 62 percent in 2011.


The logical and natural implication is that as Internet usage gradually shifts to broadband modes, users in all markets also will shift their usage in the same direction.


In fact, mobile voice adoption accomplished in less than a decade what policymakers had fretted over for many decades, namely the issue of how to provide phone service to human beings in the developed world. That no longer is a significant issue, and the problem was solved with minimal action by global regulators.



The ITU notes that there are 5.9 billion mobile subscriptions now in use, representing mobile penetration of 87 percent overall and 79 percent in the developing world. The next issue will be broadband service, but the previous success with voice suggests the broadband problem is anything but insurmountable.



Mobile broadband subscriptions have grown 45 percent annually over the last four years and today there are twice as many mobile broadband as fixed broadband subscriptions. Though much of that activity occurs in the developed world, there is no particular reason to believe broadband will not be adopted rapidly in developing regions as well.



So the notion that people anywhere in the world “are being left behind” completely misses the rapid adoption of mobile services by all users, everywhere, at a pace regulators might have found “impossible.”



To be sure, broadband adoption has not yet reached the levels of mobile use. But few believe there is any fundamental reason why that will not continue to evolve at a rapid rate, everywhere.



It is one matter to note that, at the moment, “there is a wide disparity in broadband access around the world, both within countries and between countries.” It is quite another matter to make the argument that structural barriers are so significant that consumer demand and supplier cleverness cannot fill the gap quickly.


Without diminishing some important role for regulators in the telecommunications business, once again it seems regulators are far behind the curve.