'There are more telephone lines in Manhattan than in the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa'
(Regan, R, (2002)80:20 Development in an Unequal World Educating and Acting for a Better World).

A growing interconnectedness between peoples is considered a key and highly significant globalisation process. Of particular importance has been the development of Information Technology and the Internet, however, the growth of information technology networks has by no means been spatially even. Whilst a little over half of the population of the United Kingdom are 'internet users', only around 20% of the French population are, around 5% of South Africans and less than one half a percent of the populations of Nicaragua and Senegal (The Central Intelligence Agency's World Fact Book, 2002). A second issue for concern when considering communications in a global context, is how concentrated the control over communication systems is. In 1982 there were fifty media firms dominating the market, there are now fewer than ten.

The number of telephone main lines and internet hosts in the partner countries

	United Kingdom	Nicaragua	Senegal	South Africa	France	Germany
Telephone main lines per 1,000 people in 1990	411	13	6	93	495	441
Telephone main lines per 1,000 people in 2000	589	31	22	114	579	611
Internet hosts per 1,000 people in 1990	7.5	0	0	1.2	2.6	5.8
Internet hosts per 1,000 people in 2000	28.2	0.3	0.2	4.4	19.1	24.8

Source: United Nations Human Development Reports 2002


'In the US today, six corporations control most of what you see on television.  One company has gobbled up more than 1,000 radio stations across the country. And since 1975, two-thirds of all independently-owned newspapers have disappeared.'
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Globalization of the Internet

Most internet search engines charge a fee to list a site in their directory. Google was one of the exceptions, but it is now also charging. You might be asking, "What does a fee-driven search engine system mean for you and me?" Well, it means that when we search for information, by definition all of the results will be paid advertisements. The internet will thus become dominated by the companies with the largest advertising budgets. This will generate greater profits for the largest companies, and this globalization of the internet will facilitate the spread of other globalization efforts worldwide. The small website owner will fade away into oblivion in the same way that small business owners across the world are being swallowed or crushed by the corporate machine.
» Adapted from http://www.anti-marketing.com

'Brazil throws Microsoft out of the window'

Brazil's government has pledged to heavily invest in its own software industry and plans to rid all its federal departments of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The president of the Government's National Institute for Information Technology has argued against propriety software such as Windows chiefly because of the exorbitant licensing costs, free software, he believes, will democratize access to knowledge.
» Adapted from Macpherson, S (2005) New Internationalist 380