Abstract
The diffusion of mobile telephony in the developing world has been rapid. More recently, mobile phones have emerged as the only platform for billions in the world to access the Internet. It is likely that most of the resource-constrained current and potential Internet users, including the 15% of the world’s population still living outside the range of any mobile signal, will have a mobile-only digital repertoire for a long time to come. In such a scenario, ICT4D and the mobile communication research community would need an analytical lens to understand qualitative differences in the use of the Internet as well as the market dynamics and regulatory regimes that determine the character and diffusion of the Internet. Donner’s After Access is such an analytical lens that emphasizes the differential uses of the Internet by those with “mobile-only” and “mobile-centric” digital repertoires.
While a switch-only function (person to person connectivity) characterized early telecommunications, the data-enabled mobiles of the contemporary world have both the switch and server functions (information stored on a server, which can be accessed and changed asynchronously). Donner astutely observes that based on the new affordances, users can read and write to the server without being bound by geography—“place(less)ness” (p. 83), but also benefit from allowing the devices to track their geographic location—“place(full)ness” (p. 95). These benefits are, however, tempered with constraints like a “metered mindset” (p. 123) or constant worry about cost of data use; limited affordances for mobile-only users to participate in information production; and the design, market, and regulatory dynamics that unduly favor bigger companies to monopolize and balkanize the open web, for example, the “return of ‘walled gardens’” (p. 157). Donner suggests ways to overcome these constraints in the form of increased public access to the Internet, subsidies for data prosumption, development and distribution of mobile apps in local markets and through stores that are de-linked from the big brands and zero-rating or “Over the Top” services. Using the After Access lens, Donner lucidly presents potential benefits and constraints posed by a more mobile Internet, while addressing questions on digital inclusion and socioeconomic development. It adds caution to the discourse that celebrates closure of the digital divide.
The strength of the After Access lens is that it helps analyze barriers to effective use of the Internet at various levels, from users—for example, the difference in the Internet experience of a “person with $10 phone and the person with $ 1,000 laptop and an always-on broadband connection” (p. 183), to big market players—for example, “concentrations of editorial and curatorial power” involved in the bundling of services and zero-rating (p. 170). This analytical lens has also made a sophisticated adaptation of concepts such as “polymedia” (Madianou & Miller, 2012), among others, while developing its core arguments of “digital repertoire” and “effective use.” A potential limitation of Donner’s lens, as he readily acknowledges, is that it is incapable of capturing the “intersections between the technology and the cultural context” (p. 109). However, this trade-off is expected when one settles for a more universal and portable analytical lens over a culturally sensitive ecological approach.
After Access should be of special interest to scholars and practitioners of mobile communication because it discusses a range of issues arising from the emerging scenario of “mobile-only” and “mobile-centric” Internet use and the implications for theory and practice.