The actual links to the UNCTAD Information Economy Reports are at the bottom of this entry. It should be noted that UNCTAD chose to use a document format that cannot be copied and pasted.
After reading all of the report, I don't really feel the need to write up anything about chapters 6,7 and 8. I think that the UNCTAD report is nice for the broad brush strokes but lacks a lot of fine detail that I would expect of it.
Most of it smacks of common sense. As someone close to me pointed out, this report is supposed to be useful to technology laypeople in governments - but what I have found is that what it misses can lead to a lot of misdirection and can even influence improperly due not to what it has, but what it lacks. On top of that, it is not written for a layperson.
Certainly, as the overview points out, there are trends in technology - such as mobile phone use. But there are also very large hindrances to developing economies, such as the inability for SMEs in developing economies to compete with large corporations with an international presence (not just other SMEs!). It doesn't mention much of where international telecoms and bandwidth pricing are hurdles for developing economies. There are other things, of course.
The UNCTAD report, quoted everywhere, has some firm basis and with interpretation by non-laypeople could be useful. Digital divide issues remain largely untouched and lost in the mechanics that reeks of the late 1990s.
UNCTAD Information Economy Report 2007-2008 Overview (373 K)
UNCTAD Information Economy Report 2007-2008 (9.61 Megabytes)
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