Telecommunications - Essay Example

Nevertheless information is also important to economic activities, ranging from agriculture to manufacturing and services. If information is significant to advancement, then telecommunications, as a way of sharing information is not only a relationship between people, although a connection in the sequence of the advancement processes itself. The role of telecommunications in broadcasting information can be predominantly important in rural regions where other methods of acquiring and transmission information for instance personal contact, transport, and postal services are expected to be less available.

Distance signifies time, in an all the time more time-conscious world. In economies that rely forcefully upon agriculture or the mining of resources, remoteness from urban markets has usually been improved only with the setting up of enhanced transportation facilities, usually roads. Nevertheless transportation links leave industries without the availability of information which is becoming ever more important for production and marketing of their products. Yet another difficulty experienced by many developing countries is economic field.

As they endeavor to expand their economies, judicious availability of information becomes especially significant. In the demand of physical goods and amenities, rural areas could only vie across obstacles of distance and geography if they had a natural resource advantage. Telecommunications is also critical to the rising information fields in developing areas. In the areas of information goods and services, dependable telecommunications infrastructure can make geography and distance immaterial.

For instance, the National Research Council reveals that for Africa, where populations and economic activities continue mostly rural-based, sharing information is crucial if Africans are to contribute to finding solutions to their own development problems:"Economic development in Africa will depend heavily on the development of the information sector. Countries will need the ability to communicate efficiently with local and overseas markets to determine where they many have comparative advantages for supplying their products to consumers or to purchase essential imports, based on current prices and services.

Many of the economic development problems facing African countries have scientific and technological components that will require solutions to be developed in Africa by African scientists.. Lack of information is a critical constraint" (National Research Council, 1990).In the past several years, the role of telecommunications in the development process has acquired extensive focus. The ITU performed a series of analyses starting with a literature research, followed by a series of case studies on different developmental applications of telecommunications, which were summed up in Telecommunications for Development (1983).

Other case studies were compiled in Information, Telecommunications, and Development (1986). The ITU's Maitland Commission pointed at the significance of telecommunica