Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) executive director, Sonia Jorge
Photo: A4AI

[Via Satellite 10-09-13] A group of private and public sector players have come together to launch the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), a coalition to lead policy and regulatory reform and spur action to drive down high Internet prices in developing countries. By advocating for open, competitive and innovative broadband markets, A4AI aims to help access prices fall to below 5 percent of monthly income worldwide, a target set by the United Nations Broadband Commission. Reaching this goal can help to connect the two-thirds of the world that is presently not connected to the Internet, according to the International Telecommunications Union, and make universal access a reality.

A4AI’s global sponsors include Google, Omidyar Network, U.K. DFID and USAID, as well as a host of governments, tech companies and civil society organizations from developed and developing countries, backed by Tim Berners-Lee and his World Wide Web Foundation. The Alliance appointed Sonia Jorge as executive director and its honorary chairperson is Bitange Ndemo, the immediate former permanent secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communications, who is widely regarded as the father of broadband in Kenya.

“The reason for the Alliance is simple – the majority of the world’s people are still not online, usually because they can’t afford to be. In Mozambique, for example, a recent study showed that using just 1GB of data can cost well over two months wages for the average citizen,” Berners-Lee said. “The result of high prices is a widening digital divide that slows progress in vital areas such as health, education and science. Yet with the advent of affordable smartphones, new undersea cables and innovations in wireless spectrum usage, there is simply no good reason for the digital divide to continue. The real bottleneck now is anti-competitive policies and regulations that keep prices unaffordable. The Alliance is about removing that barrier and helping as many as possible get online at reasonable cost.”