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Digital Connectivity in Lao PDR Lagging Behind Peers : A Short Assessment with Policy Recommendations to Catch Up

Digital connectivity access to affordable and reliable internet services has become a key driver of economic and social development globally. Economic activities and government services are increasingly moving online. Lao PDR is well-positioned to take advantage of these trends to improve growth, competitiveness and services provision to the population, but urgent interventions are needed to ensure that Lao PDR does not fall further behind regional peers. This note reviews the status of digital connectivity in Lao PDR and options for improvement, including the respective roles of government and industry. The main findings are as follows: By almost every measure, Lao PDR is lagging significantly in terms of accessibility, quality and affordability of internet services compared to other comparable regional economies. Access to mobile broadband is increasing, but rural and more remote communities are still unserved or underserved. Actions to close this digital divide are needed urgently. Fixed broadband required for high-capacity data transmission to support the next wave of digital development is particularly limited. Prices for internet are comparatively high. High capacity fixed broadband services are very limited and extremely expensive. The minimum retail tariff regime for mobile, voice and data services may reduce the ability of operators to differentiate services and compete on price and service quality. Quality of service and affordability of internet are continuing concerns which are slowing the introduction and use of digital services and applications. Regulatory capacity and expertise is increasing, but remains comparatively low which is further limiting market growth and investment.

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စာတမ်းအမျိုးအစား Reports, journal articles, and research papers (including theses and dissertations)
စာရွက်စာတမ်း၏ ဘာသာစကား
  • အင်္ဂလိပ်ဘာသာစကား
ခေါင်းစဉ်များ
  • Communications infrastructure
  • Economy and commerce
  • Internet
ပထဝီဧရိယာ (spatial range)
  • လာအိုပြည်သူ့ဒီမိုကရက်တစ်သမ္မတနိုင်ငံ
မူပိုင်ခွင့် Yes
ပြင်ဆင်ချက် 1
ခွင့်ပြုချက် Creative Commons Attribution
ရေးသားသူ (အဖွဲ့) World Bank
ထုတ်ဝေသူ World Bank
ထုတ်ဝေသည့်ရက်စွဲ 2018
စာမျက်နှာခွဲ 20
အဓိကစကားလုံးများ Digital Connectivity in Lao PDR Lagging Behind Peers
တင်ခဲ့သည့်ရက်စွဲ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ 7, 2019, 04:00 (UTC)
ပြန်လည်ပြင်ဆင်သည့်ရက်စွဲ ဒီဇင်ဘာ 4, 2019, 03:59 (UTC)