Making the web more mobile

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, he was the first and only user. Now, just 20 years later, there are almost 1.5 billion users. That is an incredible rate of growth. But it also means that more than 75% of the global population remains unconnected, most of whom live in developing countries and survive on very low incomes.

Berners-Lee quickly realized that the web would become an important resource, and so, in 1994, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). As well as developing international standards for internet technologies, another core task of the W3C is to work towards universal web access; to make the web a medium of communication available to everyone.

It will, of course, take time for the web to reach 100% of the planet’s population, but it is possible to bring the web to more people in a relatively short space of time. In Africa, for example, only about 5% of the population has web access, but nearly 30% have a mobile phone. If we make the web available to everyone who already has a mobile phone, we would rapidly increase the number of people who have access to the web. If, then, we consider that there are more than four billion mobile phones worldwide, then we could double or triple the number of people benefiting from web access.

The combination of mobile phones and web technology has the strength to provide greater access to ICTs in general. SMS is the dominant technology for communication in many area parts of ACP countries, but SMS requires some level of literacy and not all languages are supported by the technology. There are many barriers to overcome before more people can access the web. We need further advancement to make web content available to people with limited reading skills, and the development of technology that can translate content into languages that are currently not supported on the web. But, there are ways we can start to provide more useable web content for people in ACP countries.

Using a web browser on a mobile phone is, of course, one way of accessing the web from a mobile phone, but the costs of the devices and connectivity make it prohibitive for many people in developing countries. Content developers need to make more use of technologies, like voice applications or text delivery systems that support more languages, to better meet the needs of a wider audience.

Specific knowledge

Many major international organizations, such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) or the World Bank, make the correct assumption that the availability of the internet, adequate bandwidth and other infrastructural considerations, leads to economic development. I agree with that to some extent, but providing internet connectivity to the developing world does not immediately translate into economic or social development. There is a critical gap between internet access and access to usable and useful web content. It is access to, and the ability to make use of, information on health, education and agriculture that impacts socio-economic development, not connectivity alone.

In September 2008, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, launched the World Wide Web Foundation to focus specifically on content, to look at how we can help people develop their own information sources that will be useful to their community, their region and their country. Almost all the content on the web has been developed in the US, Europe, Japan and other industrialized nations. There is a lot of content on the web but very little of it is relevant to people living in the rural areas of developing countries. The most useful information comes from local people since they are generally the ones who know exactly what kind of information or resources will impact their communities and lives.

As an organization, the Web Foundation realizes it is a challenge to encourage people to experiment with the web, and understands the web’s benefits when a primary concern revolves around securing basic needs. We believe we need to make a case for web benefits in the developing world and need to raise awareness for its benefits, particularly among NGOs –
specifically that developing mobile content for the web does not have to be difficult.

We therefore need to improve skills in these technologies, develop communities and create the conditions for the viral growth of expertise. This will show people how to create voice applications and mobile web content that is useful to them and which encourages their local community to join the web community. More people have to be able to use, author and develop content on the web. To achieve this, we need to understand what kind of tools people without programming skills can use to create content. The technology already exists to do that, and to deliver the web to mobile phones.

The Web Foundation is now looking at ways to help people to select the most appropriate technology to create usable and useful web content. We want to identify a range of available technologies, and the most promising directions to explore in the future to give people the opportunity to develop their own mobile web content. Many of the tools already available are free and open source and do not require a lot of technical knowledge. And once people become aware of the value of the content they produce, they will be encouraged to add more content to the web for others to see and use.

Connectivity is, of course, still an issue for many people in rural areas, and we still have to focus on connectivity, to lower costs and increase bandwidth so that people can access videos, audio clips and photos from their phones. But, in my opinion, connectivity is only part of the solution to inviting people in the developing world to join the world wide web. Four billion people worldwide are already connected; they just need the means to create their own, locally developed, content and to have better access to the information on the web. We have to make use of the tools that are available now, to provide more services and empower more people with access to the web.

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Stéphane Boyera works with the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3.org) and is program manager with the World Wide Web Foundation (www.webfoundation.org)