Description
This multi-authored volume is one of the first books to present scholarly research on the liberating opportunities offered by information and communications technologies in the Caribbean and the global south. While acknowledging challenges of policy implementation and technology adaptation, the book nevertheless identifies a range of empowering development options in media literacy, e-fisheries, m-banking, mobile telephony, m-agriculture, tele-working, techno-driven environmental strategies and intellectual property reforms.
More broadly, this volume explores the region’s pre-liberalization challenges and the ups and downs of post-liberalization mobile competition in Caribbean telecommunications. While contemplating the ever-present risks of a return to monopoly conditions in some mobile markets, the volume points to the real benefits achieved in customer satisfaction and business value-creation from the pervasive ‘talk’ technologies. It points to the even greater potential that resides in deploying broadband wireless technologies and ‘smart’ ICT applications for development within a regional framework of continuing investment promotion, digital transition, creative policymaking, and in the seeming paradox of ‘flexible but firm’ industry regulation.
Ringtones of Opportunity: Policy, Technology and Access in Caribbean Communications is a ‘must read’ for those in search of new approaches to technology-assisted economic development. This book will be especially useful to regional and global thought leaders in ICTs, as well as to researchers, investors, service providers, government policymakers and students in a wide range of development disciplines.
About the Author
Hopeton S. Dunn is Professor of Communications Policy and Digital Media in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus and is Academic Director of the University’s Master’s Degree Programme in Telecommunications and Policy Management. Professor Dunn is Chairman of the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica. He sits on the editorial or advisory boards of several academic journals, including Telecommunications Policy and Critical Arts, where he is an Associated Editor.
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Introduction
Section I: Strategic Issues
- Caribbean ICTs: Strategic Issues, Challenges and Opportunities
Hopeton S. Dunn and Indianna D. Minto-Coy
- Revisiting Communications Policy in South Africa and the Global South Pieter J. Fourie
- Re-thinking ICT Policymaking in the Caribbean: A Decision-Making Framework for the Twenty-First Century and Capacity-building
Hopeton S. Dunn, Michele Thomas and Allison Brown
Section II: ICT Applications and Society
- Information Literacies and Educational Technologies: New Opportunities, New Challenges Hopeton S. Dunn and Sheena Johnson-Brown
- Building Community Access – Cybercentres and the Development Challenge in the Caribbean Arlene Bailey
- Contemplating Mobile Applications for Small-Scale Fisheries in Trinidad and Tobago Kim Mallalieu and Candice Sankarsingh
- ICTs and Agriculture in Jamaica: Exploring the Possibilities of ‘M’ Lloyd George Waller
- Mobility and Work: Telework and Employment Relations in the English-Speaking Caribbean Noel M. Cowell and Hopeton S. Dunn
- Online Deliberation and Decision-Making: Case Studies of Selected Regional Civil Society Organizations in the Caribbean
Dhanaraj Thakur
Section III: Legal and Environmental Issues
10.Legal Issues in Telecommunications Interconnection Lisamae Gordon
- Intellectual Property Rights and Caribbean ICT Industries: The Case for Reform
Dianne Daley and Nicole Foga
- Legislating Cybercrimes in Jamaica: Issues of Public and Corporate Liability
- Georgia Gibson-Henlin
- ICTs and the Environment
Michael Taylor and Richardo Williams
Appendix
Contributors
Index
