$\"\"$ <\/a>

Figure 1: Portion of monthly income as a percentage consumed by a 2 Mbps Internet plan (Sources: ISP websites, IMF, CIA)<\/p><\/div>\n

For the remaining countries, a 2 Mbps Internet plan could account for up to 14% of a subscriber\u2019s income in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but in the Cayman Islands it could account for less than 1.8%. On average across the sample group, the plan would represent approximately 5.5% of a subscriber\u2019s monthly income.<\/p>\n

Discussion<\/h3>\n
For the purpose of general comparison, and similar to what was done when examining Internet spend<\/a>, Figure 2 shows the percentage of a person’s monthly income that would be expended in select OECD countries for Internet plans with advertised download speeds of less than 2.5 Mbps. The average was approximately 1.5% of a person’s monthly income, as opposed to 5.5% as in the case of the English-speaking Caribbean (with Belize and Guyana excluded).<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Figure 2: Portion of monthly income as a percentage consumed by Internet plans under 2.5 Mbps in select OECD countries as at September 2010 (Sources: OECD)<\/p><\/div>\n
Recognising that, on average, the percentage of monthly income in the Caribbean is over three times that of surveyed OECD countries, some of the challenges with regard to take-up of Internet service in the region becomes evident. Most critically, Internet pricing for a baseline broadband plan in the Caribbean can consume a sizeable portion of a person\u2019s income, when compared with all other critical expenses that must be accommodated. Hence the majority of citizens might not be able to afford it, especially since they would also need to possess a computing device with which to connect to and make use of the Internet.<\/p>\n
Additionally, as it relates to prices offered by ISPs for Internet service, English-speaking Caribbean countries are not as populous as most OECD countries, and so would be at a disadvantage. The latter would enjoy lower prices due to economies of scale that can be realised in-country, and possibly across groups of countries (such as the EU). Further, higher population densities, greater urbanisation and more established support infrastructure would also lead to efficiencies in respect of network deployment, which would be reflected in the prices offered. It may therefore be little surprise why take-up of Internet service has not achieved critical mass in the region, and its use has not become more fully integrated into Caribbean societies.<\/p>\n
___________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In an earlier post, we examined the amount spent on Internet service in the Caribbean. Now, in the last of our Snapshot series (for now), we look at the affordability […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,11,6,18],"tags":[59,14,32,61,63],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-caribbean","category-ict-tech","category-internet","category-telecoms-2","tag-digital-divide","tag-ict4d","tag-information-society","tag-snapshot-series","tag-survey","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2iE1G-d4","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}