Transparent Estimation of Internet Penetration from Network Observations
- 1 Citations
- 1.6k Downloads
Abstract
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) provide Internet penetration statistics, which are collected from official national sources worldwide, and they are widely used to inform policy-makers and researchers about the expansion of digital technologies. Nevertheless, these statistics are derived with methodologies, which are often opaque and inconsistent across countries. Even more, regimes may have incentives to misreport such statistics. In this work, we make a first attempt to evaluate the consistency of the ITU/OECD Internet penetration statistics with an alternative indicator of Internet penetration, which can be measured with a consistent methodology across countries and relies on public data. We compare, in particular, the ITU and OECD statistics with measurements of the used IPv4 address space across countries and find very high correlations ranging between 0.898 and 0.978 for all years between 2006 and 2010. We also observe that the level of consistency drops for less developed or less democratic countries. Besides, we show that measurements of the used IPv4 address space can serve as a more timely Internet penetration indicator with sub-national granularity, using two large developing countries as case studies.
Keywords
Gross Domestic Product Address Space Internet Service Provider Border Gateway Protocol IPv4 AddressReferences
- 1.Internet growth versus economic and political indicators, October 2014. http://www.ics.forth.gr/tnl/ipen/index.html
- 2.Best, M.L., Wade, K.W.: The internet and democracy: Global catalyst or democratic dud? Bull. Sci. Technol. Soc. 29(4), 255–271 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 3.Dainotti, A., Benson, K., King, A., Claffy, K., Kallitsis, M., Glatz, E., Dimitropoulos, X.: Estimating Internet address space usage through passive measurements. ACM SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. (CCR) 44(1), 42–49 (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 4.Datanet India Pvt. Ltd.: Indiastat.com (2014). http://www.indiastat.com/
- 5.Gleditsch, K.S.: Expanded trade and GDP data. J. Confl. Resolut. 46, 712–724 (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 6.Groshek, J.: The democratic effects of the Internet, 1994–2003. Int. Commun. Gaz. 71(3), 115–136 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 7.Huffaker, B., Fomenkov, M., Claffy, K.: Geocompare: A comparison of public and commercial geolocation databases. CAIDA Technical report, May 2011. http://www.caida.org/publications/papers/2011/geocompare-tr/geocompare-tr.pdf
- 8.ICAT: Turkish electronic communications sector quarterly market reports (2013). http://www.btk.gov.tr/kutuphane_ve_veribankasi/yil_istatistikleri/ehsyib.pdf
- 9.ITU: Telecommunications development sector. http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/
- 10.ITU: Handbook for the collection of administrative data on telecommunications/ ICT, 2011 (2011). http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/publications/handbook.aspx
- 11.ITU: Manual for measuring ICT access and use by households and individuals (2011). http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/publications/manual2014.aspx
- 12.ITU: World telecommunication/ICT indicators database (2013). http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/publications/wtid.aspx
- 13.Jerven, M.: Poor numbers: How We Are misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (2013)Google Scholar
- 14.Kende, M.: Global Internet report. Internet Society (2014)Google Scholar
- 15.Lehr, M., Lear, E., Vest, T.: Running on empty: The challenge of managing Internet addresses. In: Proceedings of the 36th Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC), Arlington, VA, USA, September 2008Google Scholar
- 16.Marshall, M.G., Jaggers, K.: Polity IV project: Political regime characteristics and transitions, 1800–2012 (2013). http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
- 17.Maxmind GeoIP2 City Accuracy. https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-city-accuracy
- 18.Maxmind: GeoIP2 Databases. http://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-databases
- 19.Milner, H.V.: The digital divide: The role of political institutions in technology diffusion. Comp. Polit. Stud. 39(2), 176–199 (2006)CrossRefMathSciNetGoogle Scholar
- 20.OECD: Key ICT indicators (2013). http://www.oecd.org/internet/broadband/oecdkeyictindicators.htm
- 21.Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, B., Lal, K.: Internet diffusion in Sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-country analysis. Telecommun. Policy 29(7), 507–527 (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 22.Rød, E.G., Weidmann, N.B.: Empowering activists or autocrats? The Internet in authoritarian regimes. J. Peace Res. 52(3), (2015, forthcoming)Google Scholar
- 23.Roeller, L.H., Waverman, L.: Telecommunications infrastructure and economic development: A simultaneous approach. Am. Econ. Rev. 91(4), 909–923 (2001). http://www.jstor.org/stable/2677818 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 24.Sridhar, K.S., Sridhar, V.: Telecommunications and growth: Causal model, quantitative and qualitative evidence. Econ. Polit. Wkly. 41(25), 2611–2619 (2006). http://www.jstor.org/stable/4418381 Google Scholar
- 25.SWITCH: Swiss National Research and Education Network (NREN). http://www.switch.ch/
- 26.United Nations: Millenium development goals (2014). http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
- 27.United Nations Department of Economic & Social Affairs: United Nations e-government survey (2014). http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/e-government-survey-2014.html
- 28.University of California, Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and the International Rice Research Institute: Global Administrative Areas Dataset (2012). http://www.gadm.org/
- 29.University of Oregon: Route Views Project. http://www.routeviews.org/
- 30.WEF: Global information technology report (2014). http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-information-technology
- 31.Weidmann, N.B., Kuse, D., Gleditsch, K.S.: The geography of the international system: the cshapes dataset. Int. Interact. 36(1), 86–106 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050620903554614 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 32.World Intellectual Property Organization: Global Innovation Index (2014). http://www.wipo.int/econ_stat/en/economics/gii/