Connecting the other three billion

INFORMATION and communications technologies have their benefits, but they have not reached all equally, with an obvious concentration of resources in developed countries. It is this that led, in the mid- 1990s, to the introduction of the term `digital divide¿, which according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) addresses `troubling disparities in terms of access to information technology¿. Originally coined with respect to computer access, the term has evolved to include access to the Internet and broadband technologies.