Information and Communication Technologies

Computing, connectivity, content, capacity. These are the four C's of the ITC's. The four C's will help us to a greater approach of the ICT's and the benefits they carry.

ITC's and develpment

ICT's have certain roles depending on he goal or target aimed. If for example the goal is to erradicate hunger and pverty, the role of ICT's is to acces to market information and reduce transaction costs. Achiveve universal primary education: Increase supply of trained teacher and broaden availability of quality educational materials. Promote gender equality and empower women: Delivel educational and literacy programs specifically targeted to poor girls and women. Reduce child mortality, imporve maternal health and combat aids and other diseases: Increase monitoring and inoformation-sharing on disease and famine; Increase acces to reproducitve health informaion. Ensure enviromental sustentability: Increase access to awareness of susteinable development strategies.

World summit on the information society

ICT challenges: Awareness, availability, accesibility and affordability.

Hardware and software cost:

            Affordability is a prime factor in the digital divide.

            Software scales only with skilled humans. Open source software is often very difficult for             unskilled users.

Connectivity costs: Shared acces model = pay as you use/ Brpadband: flat-rate

Robustness: Telecommunication equipment is designed to have 99.999% of reliability.

Passive consumptions of content – Active production of information.

Usability and interface: The use of ICT requires a level of literacy, both lingual and technical. We need to transform complex technologies into user-friendly systems.

Security: Security is a concern even for uninformed or unaware end-users, it places implicit cost on all transactions. Computer Energy Response Teams (CERT)

Regulation and policy: Many developing countries regulate ICT's restictively. In these coynrties telecom providers end to be Government companies. Countries with fewer restrictions often find higher levels of ICT adoption.

Digital information and broadcasting: Digital information can be broadcast easioy and there is already widespread usage of digital tv and even radio. The uses of digital media reduces the marginal cost on information transmission significantly.

1.      Which are the four components (4C's) of ICTs?

2.      Mention at least three targets of ICTs.

3.      What are the challenges that ICT have to face?

4.      Mention four characteristics the Internet of the uture must have.