US and other 'advanced nations' trail in cell phone use
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)."