ICT Deployment in the Asia-Pacific Countries: Eliminating Information Asymmetries
This chapter extensively discusses the process of ICT diffusion across 12 Asia-Pacific economies, between 1990 and 2017. It provides a detailed analysis of country-specific ICT diffusion curves with respect to four core ICT indicators: mobile-cellular tel
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ICT Deployment in the Asia-Pacific Countries: Eliminating Information Asymmetries
5.1 Digital Revolution in Asia-Pacific: A Snapshot Over the last few decades (since the 1970s onward), the world has witnessed the process of rapid diffusion of new information and communication technologies (ICT), and, undeniably, this process has enforced remarkable changes and structural shifts going far beyond economic sphere of life. At a time, the process of ICT diffusion radically differs, mainly in terms of speed and geographic coverage, from the process of diffusion of “old” technologies (Comin and Hobijn 2011). ICT become fast available widespread and they diffuse at historically unprecedented rate (Comin et al. 2006). The explosive growth of information and communications technologies and rapidly growing demand for all innovative technological solutions ICT offer, particularly the rise of Internet and its related applications, gave rise to unprecedented opportunities to all society members. Interestingly, ICT is fast spreading not only in economically advanced countries but also in economies that lag behind in terms of social, economic, and infrastructural development. An interesting observation arises, showing often materially poorer countries tend to adopt ICT faster than countries that are relatively better off—compare, for instance, estimates of ICT diffusion rates provided in Baliamoune-Lutz (2003) or more recently in Lechman (2017a, b). Now, in 2018, Asia-Pacific economies seem to be fully benefiting from the opportunities offered to each individual but also to companies and whole societies, by the digital revolution. A huge part of Asia-Pacific residents, during last two decades, have gained reliable and affordable (due to rapidly dropping prices of ICT) access to a great variety of ICT solutions. Due to sound telecommunication policies, effective implementation of national e -strategies, and free market competition since the early 1980s of the twentieth century, ICT were diffusing across Asia-Pacific societies. Time trends demonstrating radical shifts with respect to core ICT indicators, just between 2005 and 2017, speak for themselves (Fig. 5.1).
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Marszk et al., The Emergence of ETFs in Asia-Pacific, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12752-7_5
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5 ICT Deployment in the Asia-Pacific Countries: Eliminating Information Asymmetries Telephony (access and use)
World Wide Web (access and use)
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0 2005
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Fig. 5.1 Changes in core ICT indicators. Asia-Pacific Region. Period 2005–2017
In 2005, only 22% of Asian-Pacific societies had access to mobile telephony, and the state of its adoption was comparably low with fixed telephones (slightly above 15% in 2005) (WTI 2018). However, due to rapid expansion of ICT, in 2017, mobile-cellular telephony penetration rate exceeded 100% suggesting that, on average, in this year Asian-Pacific so
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