In OECD countries, networks look like a mesh with multiple paths that can act as each other’s backup. In developing countries, however, communication networks often resemble rivers, with small branches of regional networks delivering their traffic to a central national backbone that ends at one submarine fibre, making cable cuts a greater risk to the functioning of the economy.

This report focuses on the development of backhaul and cross-border networks, which enable local networks to connect to the wider Internet. To connect their networks to others around the world, operators need access to regional and international high-speed networks. The level of investment required in these networks varies and can be very different from region to region.

This report considers the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 alongside the use of network technologies to prolong IPv4 use in the face of depletion of further IPv4 protocol addresses.

This guidance addresses a number of key issues in the emerging mobile and online payment area, including the need to establish minimum levels of consumer protection across payment mechanisms, enhanced privacy and child protection, and standards for transparent and accessible information disclosures.

Colombia has done much to strengthen the rules governing its telecommunication sector, but it must give its regulator more power to enforce them in order to increase competition, particularly in the highly concentrated mobile market, according to a new OECD report.

An OECD report looks at new approaches to enhance spectrum management to make more spectrum resources available for wireless communication services to meet current and future demand and, at the same time, increase the efficiency in its use.

A new OECD report finds empirical evidence that imposing mandatory higher charges for the completion (termination) of international inbound traffic suppresses demand. Moreover, governments that impose higher termination charges do not see their revenues increase proportionately.

Enhancements to fixed broadband networks remain critical despite the growth in the use of wireless services. This report examines the development of fixed networks, barriers to their upgrading and regulatory challenges.

The OECD Recommendation on Digital Government Strategies aims to support the development and implementation of digital government strategies that bring governments closer to citizens and businesses.

Cloud computing has become a platform for innovation. This paper looks at how the cloud changes the way computing is carried out, and evaluates the benefits, challenges and economic and environmental impacts. It discusses the policy issues raised and the role of governments and other stakeholders in addressing them.

The OECD is present at the Internet Governance Forum 2014 and presenting its most recent work on the Internet economy in a number of sessions.

In countries with four or more mobile operators benefits to consumers are visible through more competitive, more inclusive, and more understandable offers. International mobile roaming is another area where challenger brands are changing markets.

A key issue for policy makers and regulators is market structures that will best deliver efficient and inclusive mobile communication services. This report addresses recent experience in selected countries that have changed or held constant the number of facilities-based operators; and initial experience and key questions that have arisen with wireless network sharing.

This report examines what economic theory can teach us about the reasons why the adoption of this latest Internet protocol is taking longer than was thought at its introduction.

Like its better known cousin ‘Black Friday’, ‘Cyber Monday’ is a marketing term to mark the kick-off of the holiday shopping season, right after Thanksgiving, in the US. Unlike Black Friday though, Cyber Monday is all about e-commerce.

Measuring the Digital Economy: A New Perspective

The Internet of things, also known as the Internet of everything or the industrial internet, is a term applied to the next 50 billion machines and devices that will go online in the coming two decades. All stakeholders will have to evaluate whether their policies and practices enable or inhibit the ability of economies and societies to seize the benefits.

This working paper describes the potential of the proliferation of new sources of large volumes of data, sometimes also referred to as "big data", for informing policy making in several areas. It also outlines the challenges that the proliferation of data raises for the production of official statistics and for statistical policies.

The report notes that industry self-regulation (ISR) can play an important role in addressing consumer issues, particularly when business codes of conduct and standards are involved. It draws on 23 case studies covering notably advertising, financial services, telecommunications, video games and software applications (apps), toys, and direct selling.

On the occasion of the Global Conference on Cyberspace meeting today in The Hague, the Global Commission on Internet Governance (GCIG) issued a statement calling on ‘the global community to build a new social compact between citizens and their elected representatives, the judiciary, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, business, civil society and the Internet technical community..

Countries are making increased efforts to develop their digital economies in a way that will maximise social and economic benefits, but now need to address the risk of disruption in areas like privacy and jobs, according to a new OECD report.

New sources of growth- Phase 2, Knowledge-based capital

Although OECD countries have made tremendous progress in recent years fostering the deployment of high-speed broadband networks, many challenges remain in terms of how to enhance and expand these networks in order to meet the growing demands of the digital economy.

Study outlining how OECD countries are dealing with the challenges of Open Government Data with a special chapter on the policy context of OGD in the United Arab Emirates.

The UK’s tallest mountain is Ben Nevis in Scotland. Recently, it became one metre taller, standing now at 1 345m rather than 1 344m above sea level. Of course, the mountain did not actually grow. Rather, the team of Ordnance Survey experts who re-measured it for the first time since 1949 were able to do so more accurately because of improvements in technology, and specifically through the use of GPS.

Code is the next universal language. In the 1970s punk rock drove a whole generation. In the 1980s it was probably money. For my generation, the interface to our imagination and to our world is software. This is why we need to get a more diverse set of people to see computers not as boring, mechanical and lonely things, but as something they can poke, tinker with and turn around.

The objective of this report is to provide an overview of progress made in the implementation of the Recommendation to determine whether any further action is necessary in this area.

Do you remember the “not-so-good old days”? When you were delayed while travelling abroad and it was too expensive to use your smartphone to check for alternatives online and inform the people you had to meet?

Over the last few years there has been increased interest among start-ups in using Internet-based platforms to crowdsource a wide variety of resources, including funding, labour, design and ideas. Does this approach work?

Algorithms lie at the heart of machine learning, which, in turn lies at the heart of much of modern life–from online shopping to intelligence gathering. But most of us know little about these powerful tools and how they work. Is this wise?

The world has seen more than one industrial revolution and another one is already upon us. We should face it as optimists.

The digital economy is here, and growing every day, sometimes in surprising ways. As ministers gather for major meetings in Paris and Cancun, government leaders should be in no doubt about the key role they must play in securing the digital economy’s future as a driver of productive and inclusive progress.

We are so used to all things digital that we can sometimes lose sight of just how enormous the phenomenon has become, and how disruptive it can be.

Digital innovation is an opportunity—for governments, for business, for the public, and for the way in which they relate to each other.

Digital science and technology are at the heart of major economic, social and–in the eyes of some–anthropological shifts. That is why we need to think about the ethics of how these tools are produced and how they are used.

Digitalisation of goods and services destroys established business models and disrupts existing value chains. New value chains emerge. This is often called disruptive innovation.

The open Internet combined with today’s emerging technologies has launched the information revolution and is powering the global digital economy. Everyone has a stake in that development, both as individuals and in the organizations in which we serve and affiliate ourselves.

The June 2016 OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Digital Economy in Cancun, Mexico will discuss online platforms. Opportunities coming from online platforms not only create innovative forms of production, consumption, collaboration and sharing between individuals and organisations, but also promote economic benefits and employment opportunities thanks to the digital economy by creating a fast-moving business environment.

On 21-23 June 2016, Ministers and stakeholders will gather in Cancún, Mexico, for an OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Digital Economy: Innovation, Growth and Social Prosperity, to move the digital agenda forward in four key policy areas foundational to the growth of the digital economy: Internet openness, digital trust, global connectivity, jobs and skills in the digital economy.

Internet access and use is growing in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), but the region needs to move faster in adding broadband infrastructure, expanding access and services and equipping people with the right skills for firms and households to fully benefit, according to a new OECD report.

Governments must act faster help people and firms to make greater use of the Internet and remove regulatory barriers to digital innovation or else risk missing out on the potentially huge economic and social benefits of the digital economy, the OECD told ministers and high-level officials from almost 40 countries today.

Mexico has become a frontrunner in a short time in making government data publicly accessible, but it now needs to put this wealth of digital information to use to foster innovation and benefit the Mexican economy and society, according to a new OECD report.

Ministers and high-level representatives from 41 countries and the European Union committed today at the closure of the OECD’s 2016 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico, to work together to preserve an open Internet, close digital divides, promote digital skills and generally do more to seize the potential of the digital economy.

OECD expert consultation co-sponsored by Harvard Global Health Institute, Swedish Vinnova, Canada Health Infoway and Global Coalition on Aging, held in Boston on 5-6 October 2016.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly permeating our economies and societies, and already underpins over 50% of global financial transactions. This event aimed to help policy makers identify and understand AI-related opportunities and challenges.

Browse the last issue of the OECD Observer on Digital economy: Secure the future.

This report provides an assessment of G20 economies’ performance with respect to digitalisation and examines some of the most pressing policy challenges in areas spanning from access to digital infrastructures to digital security to legal frameworks. It includes a set of 11 core policy recommendations that could underpin a comprehensive G20 digital agenda.

At the OECD, ee have started an ambitious 2-year project to examine how the digital transformation affects policy making across the broadest possible range of fields and topics. The objective is to work with governments, business, labour and civil society to develop policies to harness the power of the digital revolution for OECD members and developing countries and unlock the benefits for everyone.

Nearly one in five mobile phones and one in four video game consoles shipped internationally is fake, as a growing trade in counterfeit IT and communications hardware weighs on consumers, manufacturers and public finances, according to a new OECD report.

In 1964 the writer Isaac Asimov predicted life 50 years on: “Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom....and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine”.