ABSTRACT
Much of the literature on the digital divide has focused on the narrowing gap between rich and poor countries over the past decade or so. Encouraging as this tendency to narrow the divide may be, however, it does not in itself reflect any great achievement on the part of the poor countries. For, as argued in earlier chapters, the closing divide occurred from a major difference in initial levels of IT use. The starting point for developing countries was in fact so low that almost any increase would have registered as more rapid growth than in the developed countries. From this point of view, then, some decline in the divide was virtually inevitable. A more challenging and novel question is whether, because of leapfrogging and other latecomer advantages (such as the falling price of hardware), developing countries have grown faster than developed from the same initial starting point. 1 Or is it the case, conversely, that the disadvantages of being a latecomer (such as low income, inadequate education and infrastructure) exceed the advantages, leading instead to slower growth? Are there any pronounced outliers among the developing countries in the sample and what are their distinguishing characteristics? In what follows I seek to answer these questions in relation to both the Internet and mobile phones, using the limited amount of data that are currently available.
