Around the world there are ongoing developments to reform and transform industries and whole sectors with the assistance of new information & communications technologies (ICTs). There is a clear understanding that reforms are essential in order to provide the level of services and the quality be it in business or elsewhere. Lifestyle issues are under threat in relation to the quality and the affordability of healthcare, social services, education, energy and the environment and none of this can be addressed without the assistance of technology.

With the use of big data and cloud computing we can gain significant better insights in how the various social and economic systems work in order to make them more efficient and effective. This not only increases the quality of the services but also takes significant costs out of the economy. This is already happening with companies that are leading the digital economy and who are therefore far better positioned to compete than those who have been slow adapting to the new digital world.

Interestingly this development is also changing the business focus in many countries from a national one to an international one; the above mentioned developments have already resulted in international companies becoming significant competitors in national markets. Therefore those countries that are supporting these digital developments are creating an economic advantage for their companies to expand economic activities both nationally and internationally.

It is less than 150 years ago that telecommunication was invented—and see what this industry has since done to job creation and innovation; tighten the belts the pace is only going to accelerate.

However, developments depend on a first class digital infrastructure and it is therefore safe to state that the speed of these changes depends on the roll out of high-speed broadband. Importantly in designing this infrastructure it is critical to take those social and economic outcomes in mind, in order for that infrastructure to assist in the growth of the economy it has to be highly reliable and secure, it needs to have sheer unlimited capacity, provides high levels of privacy protection and has extreme low latency.

Those countries that fail to understand these infrastructure requirements will also fail to take a front row position in these international developments.

Increasingly international institution such as the OECD, the EC and the World Bank are now including broadband developments as a priority into their programs as they fully understand the economic effect of such investments.

Many countries however, are still struggling with these developments as telecoms infrastructure has so far not been looked at in this context, it has been left to the telecoms providers, whose aim in life is to maximise the profits within their current business models.

What we are seeing is a clash in these business models one the hand one those models based on maximising profits from existing infrastructure as they have no direct gains from looking at social and economic benefits for the country as a whole (those results don’t show up on their balance sheets). On the other hand we see governments and those with advanced digital economy business models in place pushing for utilities based approach to telecoms infrastructure.

One thing is for sure, those countries with ubiquitous affordable high speed broadband in place will have a very significant advantage in our for ever globalising economy.