DIGITAL DIVIDE IN SAUDI ARABIA

Digital Divide in Saudi Arabia

Digital Divide in Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia deplores the growing disparities within the international community. As we witness the advent of a globalized IS, the proliferation of ICTs is creating a digital divide that aggravates traditional inequalities between rural and urban areas, rich and poor, women and men. While the Internet has been evolving for the past five decades, its presence as a part of everyday life in the Arab world is relatively new. The first connections to the Internet in the region date back to the early 1990's. Jordan linked to the Internet in 1994; while Syria and Saudi Arabia were the slowest states in the region to allow public access to the Internet with regular access not becoming available until the late 1990's. In Syria for example, even as late as 1997, there were only two places with Internet access-the American Cultural Center and the Syrian Engineers' Association, both located in Damascus.

When Bashir Al-Assad, former president of the Syrian Engineers' Association and son of the late Hafiz al-Assad became president of Syria, Internet access became more readily available. Before then, many Syrians obtained Internet access via long distance phone calls to Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Lebanon and Jordan. These same practices of long distance remote access to the Internet (this time via Bahrain) were also common in Saudi Arabia, before the state made access to the Internet available through locally licensed ISPs. Once Internet access was made officially available in the Kingdom, Saudi Arabia witnessed the largest and fastest growth in Internet user population than any other Arab country. Thus when we study the development and meaning of the Internet in the Arab world, we are looking at a short, but rapidly changing history which varies across national borders.  (Yao and Li 2009)

Providing the technological means is a precondition for bridging the digital divide. Saudi Arabia therefore created an official infrastructure working group, which supplemented the WSIS PrepCom III. With Internet connectivity rates still low in the Arab region, special emphasis is given to wireless networks and satellite broadband connections. In this regard, the Saudi Centre for Remote Sensing provides know-how to Arab nations. Nevertheless, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Ethical Rights Art has wisely been calling for enhanced human capacity building since 1976. As a party to the Convention against Discrimination in Education, Saudi ...