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LatAm needs to adopt "digital single market" to counter technological lag: UN agency

Xinhua, August 5, 2015 Adjust font size:

To counter Latin America's lack of digital access and development, the region should consolidate and standardize its telecommunications infrastructure, a United Nations agency said Tuesday.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), based in Santiago, Chile, said it "proposes moving towards a regional digital single market which will allow taking advantage of network and scale economies to compete in a world of global platforms."

In a study titled "The New Digital Revolution," the agency advocates establishing "a common bloc with a uniform normative and institutional framework" to drive regional efforts to expand the digital economy, including telecommunications infrastructure, such as fixed and mobile broadband networks, and information and communications technology (ICT) industries like hardware, software and ICT services.

The report is to be officially presented during the Fifth Ministerial Conference on the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean, which begins in Mexico City Wednesday.

At the conference, countries are expected to outline a new digital agenda up to 2018, updating an existing Regional Plan of Action for the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean.

While the region has made some progress in expanding digital access, "countries progress at different speeds and fall strongly behind the developed economies," the report said.

Between 2006 and 2014, said ECLAC, the percentage of Internet users in Latin America went from 20.7 percent to 50.1 percent of the population, well below the average of 81.8 percent in developed countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

"The production capacity of equipment, software and apps are very weak in comparison with advanced economies and are concentrated in two or three countries of the region," said ECLAC.

Also, the agency added, "the region's lag in terms of 4G mobile connections and the spread of fiber optics hinders the exploitation of advanced technologies. Overcoming this problem implies investment and coordination efforts that could be fostered through a regional digital single market." Endit