mobile telephony has for the first time made immediate interactive communications readily available to the poor in lowincome countries access to the internet has grown more slowly and has had a substantial impact mainly on governments and larger businesses its relevance to the poor is currently more limited but may grow as the internet becomes more accessible through mobile phones much attention is now being paid to the deployment of broadband infrastructure which will enhance the capacity of fixed and mobile networks alike and has the potential to make faster cheaper internet accessible to the poor