The Rural-Urban "Digital Divide" in New Zealand: Fact or Fable?

Abstract

Much attention in recent months has been focused upon both the existence and the extent of a "digital divide" between urban New Zealanders and their rural counterparts. A commonly held perception is that rural New Zealanders hobbled by the relative disadvantages of an inadequate telecommunications infrastructure are much less able to share in the benefits offered by the Internet and electronic commerce than city dwellers. This perceived "telecommunications digital divide" is popularly held to be prejudicing theability of rural and provincial firms and individuals to access the Internet and is thus contributing to a growing "electronic commerce digital divide". Indeed many of the recommendations contained in the recently released Ministerial Inquiry into Telecommunications are justified by the assumption that price regulation in the Telecommunications industry and enshrining into standard a basic level of service available to all customers at a universal price throughout New Zealand will go a long way towards "closing the rural-urban digital divide".Despite the debate and the rhetoric however few definitive studies that either verify the existence or measure the extent of this perceived divide have been undertaken. Rather speculation surrounding the extent of the "divide" has been supported predominantly by surveys of respondents' perceptions of disadvantage rather than analyses of actual uptake and usage. Nonetheless some empirical studies have been undertaken to establish the extent of any "divide".