Digital deficit

WITH THE G8 summit and Live 8 dominating the news, the divide between advanced economies and the developing world is attracting unprecedented attention.

While the headlines understandably concentrate on the fundamentals of food, water and medical care, some engineers are looking at the longer-term problem of how to bring developing economies into the digital communications era.

The internet is a vital tool for education and trade. It currently connects 100 million computers but less than two per cent of the world's population. The reasons for this are simple. In India, for example, the average rural wage is £20 a month, putting even the cheapest PC well out of the reach of communities.

Meanwhile, in much of Asia and Africa, outside large cities power supplies and communications infrastructure are at best erratic. Over the past five years a number of initiatives have promised a solution in the shape of low-cost computing systems. Rather than creating hi-tech systems where performance is the priority, engineers have approached the issue from an entirely different angle, aiming to reduce costs, power consumption and reliance on the availability of electricity supplies.