Digital divide: the cost of access

There’s a few strands to the debate about a digital divide, primarily looking at whether people have access to computers or not. But even for those that do, another obstacle awaits: the cost of Internet access.

Tucked away in this article on TreeHugger about bandwidth is a comment about the access costs in Kazakhstan–an astonishing US$3,355 a month for basic DSL broadband (excluding modem). As this article in ars technica explains:

An unlimited dial-up plan costs about €82 ($111) in a country where the average monthly wage is €292 ($399). As for DSL, an unlimited 1.5Mbps connection costs €2,458 ($3,355) a month, and doesn’t even included the required ADSL modem. Want a 6Mbps cable connection? It’ll cost you, to the tune of €16,144 ($22,032) a month. As the OSCE report drily notes, this is more than a thousand times the price of such a connection in Western Europe.

By contrast, there is a promotion by one provider in the UK at the moment, promoting a 2mb broadband package for just £4.50 a month. Digital divide indeed.