Title:
South Korea Tops 'Information Society' Report
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
Falling prices are fueling growth in high-speed
Internet services, especially in developing
countries. Recently the International
Telecommunication Union released its "Measuring the
Information Society 2011" report. The ITU, part of
the United Nations, compared access, use and skills
in one hundred fifty-two countries.The report says
South Korea has the world's most developed economy
in information and communication technology, or ICT.
Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland were also among
the top five in the ICT Development Index. The index
compares two thousand eight and two thousand ten
scores. Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Vietnam and Russia
had some of the biggest improvements between those
years. Susan Teltscher is head of the ICT Data and
Statistics Division at the International
Telecommunication Union in Switzerland. She says
most of the growth has come from one source. "Mobile
broadband is now leading the growth race among the
different ICT indicators -- much higher than the
other key indicators that we look at, like regular
mobile phone subscriptions, fixed telephone or fixed
broadband. ... And the good news is that it's also
starting to grow in developing countries." Mobile
broadband subscriptions reached eight hundred
seventy-two million by the end of last year. Three
hundred million of those are in developing
countries. Ms. Teltscher says "If we can bring
Internet over the mobile phones, then we can really
make a difference in terms of improving Internet
access also in developing countries." Falling prices
are adding to the growth, she says: "Especially in
the broadband area, the prices dropped by over fifty
percent between two thousand eight and two thousand
ten -- which is a very encouraging finding because
this was primarily drops in the developing
countries." Even so, the report says people in many
low-income countries are still paying too much for
high-speed Internet connections. In Africa,
broadband service for a home or office cost almost
three times an average monthly income last year.
That was down from six and a half times as much in
two thousand eight. Also, there are big differences
in broadband speed and quality from country to
country. South Korea has Asia's fourth largest
economy. Susan Teltscher says, "If you look at ...
what they have been achieving in terms of ICT
development, it's actually higher than what you
would expect given their national income." For VOA
Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
