Изучение технологий доступа для широкополосной электросвязи (стр. 27 )

•        lack of competition in the last mile

•        state subsidies that produce market distortion

•        excessive cross-ownership between telephone and cable TV networks as this reduces the potential for inter-modal competition

•        environment with little or no basic infra­struc­ture such as electricity and roads

•        high maintenance and operational costs, including security, administrative and labour costs

•        high equipment prices

•        the imposition of excessive caps on volume that could be downloaded within a flat rate

•        lack of technical personnel in area of service

•        difficulty in dealing with subscribers with bad debt problems

•        poor distribution, sales and customer service presence in area of coverage

•        low usage and average revenue per subscriber

•        small potential markets

•        lack of localized content and applications in national languages besides English

•        theft of infra­struc­ture equipment such as cables

I.3.1        Analysis of Broadband Access Questionnaire: Main Findings

A questionnaire was distributed following the Second Rapporteur’s Group meeting for Question 20/2: Examination of access tech­no­lo­gies for broadband communications questionnaire in March 2003. The questionnaire requested Member States, Sector Members, relevant organizations and industry to identify relevant wireless and wireline broadband access tech­no­lo­gies and their attributes. The questionnaire also aimed to identify economic, technical and development factors influencing the effective deployment and accessibility of broadband access tech­no­lo­gies and applications. Below represents the summarized results of the responses received by the ITU‑D Secretariat by June 2003. An external expert was contracted by BDT to conduct the mid-June 2003, fifty-five responses were received from forty-nine countries from the six ITU regions.

Main Findings

The questionnaire was organised into several sections and the main findings from these sections can be summarised in brief, as follows:

Section	Main findings
Technology	The current dominant technology for delivering broadband services over wire line networks is DSL, closely followed by more traditional E1/T1, fibre and cable connections. (NOTE – Cable-TV is ahead of DSL in North-America because of a few years lead in the market.) Satellite, fixed wireless, IMT-2000, and wireless local area networks are leading solutions used to deliver wireless broadband solutions especially where wireline solutions are inappropriate. Other solutions include ISDN, Ethernet, laser free space optics and GPRS.
Competition	Only four countries did not permit competition in Internet services. 28 countries have competition in the local loop and 21 do not. 10 respondent countries did not have competition between differing broadband tech­no­lo­gies. There is no regionally dominant technology – broadband solutions vary from country to country depending on operator offerings, local economics and historic investment.
Access	There are huge differences between developed and developing nations when viewing access to broadband services on a business, household and rural telephone subscriber basis. Many developing (and some developed) countries estimate that rural subscriber access to broadband, if it exists at all, is often measured in fractions of a few per cent of the potential subscriber base.
Pricing and usage	Despite the variance in size and nature of the economies of those countries which responded to the question there is a general convergence on the average price for Internet dial up accounts across ITU‑D six Regions. However broadband prices show a marked variation between these Regions especially in terms of large bandwidth capacity based services with average broadband access costs being five times as high in the Africa region than in Europe. Unlimited usage plans offered by operators did not show a marked regional bias but rather were governed by the domestic situation facing individual operators. Pricing and Usage models varied between operators, tech­no­lo­gies and regions though broad models were identified.
Barriers to broadband deployment	Deployment costs are the single largest barrier followed by lack of demand for broadband service applications. Of the issues limiting the spread of broadband identified by respondents, the most common was that the monthly associated fee was too high. High monthly fees, high installation costs and lack of personal computers when combined result in insufficient demand to justify infra­struc­ture costs and make the business case for deploying broadband services more difficult. The majority of respondent countries do not provide loans or support to enable broadband deployment.
Quality of Service	Average downstream speeds for DSL, cable and wireless vary based on technology constraints and pricing usage model employed.
Miscellaneous	The fastest growing broadband technology area was identified as Wireless, with business applications (e. g. email and access to corporate extranets) as the main adoption driver though personal use (web browsing etc) was a close secondary driver in both developed and developing countries.

Additional and detailed information on the broadband questionnaire are given in Annex II: Analysis of the replies to the questionnaire.

I.3.2        Gender Issues Surrounding Broadband Technology Deployment

Advanced tele­com­mu­ni­cations tech­no­lo­gies such as broadband, when democratically employed, constitute powerful instruments that can contribute to securing the advances in human rights, such as fuller participation of women in all spheres of activity. Nonetheless, access to these tech­no­lo­gies may be unequal in different geographic regions and social groups. This is in part a result of women’s economic position within their households and communities. This inequality contributes to increasing the gap between those who have access to abundant information resources and those who are deprived of this access, thus reinforcing the marginalization that already exists in terms of development and technical resources. In this context broadband technology, because it promises the delivery of information at lower cost, has the potential to erode financial constraints and narrow the gendered digital divide.

Women in particular, tend to be under-represented in terms of access to these technologies, and especially women from developing countries and from marginalized groups. Ironically, women from these social groups are precisely those who make up the work force that produces computer components, in working conditions that are often damaging to their health; similarly, women in low-grade technical and service jobs also make up the largest group of computer users, while many others have lost their jobs to increasing automation. In contrast, women are less present than men in fields such as computer systems administration and in technical development. They are also proportionally under-represented as users of broadband technologies.

Many women’s organizations have come to appreciate the importance for their work of creating and participating in regional and world - wide information exchange fora that enable them to share ideas, proposals, documents and information. Broadband technologies can help make this exchange of information possible. Many portals or exchange networks have arisen on diverse issues of concern to women. For example, women’s networks and organisations at the national and regional levels are promoting applications related toe-health, agriculture, distance learning and e-commerce, etc. More specifically, some women’s organizations have noted that certain applications, such as telemedicine-health, while virtually reducing distances, can speed up access to health care and increase the health and economic well-being of women in poor communities.

E-commerce applications also positively impact on the welfare of women across economic backgrounds. For example, in Cameroon ASAFE uses ICTs as a tool through which to address the needs of disadvantaged women in the urban and rural sectors by building the capacities of small women-owned businesses. Similarly, SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) in India works with women involved in micro enterprises and craft production to market their products internationally. There is increasing recognition that the development of such telecommunication networks will contribute to advancing the cause of gender equality and to promoting greater participation in worldwide fora and decision-making processes.

Many women and women’s organizations are therefore eager to access and appropriate this technology. Nonetheless, they often face obstacles that make this endeavour more difficult for ch obstacles include: less access to resources (financial and tech­no­lo­gical), reduced access to training and technical assistance or non-gender sensitive methodologies, social and cultural barriers for women and girls to access technology, educational short - comings, misconceptions about technology and its use, language barriers, etc. Special efforts are required to overcome these problems.