DQL: The Bangladesh scenario

The fourth annual edition of the Digital Quality of Life Index (DQL) 2022 reports that Bangladesh comes at the lower end of the index, ranking 76th in the world regarding digital wellbeing out of 117 countries, or 92 per cent of the global population. Bangladesh moved up to rank 76th from last year's 103rd position among 110 countries.

Netherlands-based cybersecurity company Surfshark released the fourth annual edition of the index on 12 September 2022 based on their study on the quality of digital wellbeing across 117 countries of the world. The study conducted on five fundamental digital life pillars: internet quality, e-government, e-infrastructure, internet affordability, and e-security. The research examined more than 7.2 billion people regarding five core pillars and 14 underpinning indicators that provide a comprehensive measure. The study is based on secondary data of the United Nations open-source information, the World Bank, Freedom House, the International Communications Union, and other sources.

Among five South Asian countries, assessed in the index, Bangladesh is the second best in digital wellbeing after India, which ranked 59th globally. Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan ranked respectively 89th, 94th and 96th in the world. Bangladesh’s worst score is for e-government (ranking 86th globally), and the best is for internet affordability (29th). Bangladesh’s internet quality services come 67th, while e-security and e-infrastructure rank 75th and 85th, respectively. Out of all index pillars, Bangladesh's weakest spot is e-government, which needs to improve by 90 per cent to match the best-ranking country's result of the U.S.A.).

Bangladesh's internet quality, considering internet speed, stability, and growth, ranks 67th in the world and is 9 per cent worse than the global average. Regarding internet speed alone, Bangladesh's fixed broadband internet ranks higher than mobile in the global ranking, operating at 43 Mbps/s (78th globally). Meanwhile, the mobile internet comes 115th (14 Mbps/s). Internet in Bangladesh is affordable compared to global standards, but there's still room for improvement.

Compared to India, Bangladesh's mobile internet is 25 per cent slower, while broadband is 34 per cent slower. Since last year, mobile internet speed in Bangladesh has improved by 24.1 per cent (2.7 Mbps), and fixed broadband speed has grown by 19.5 per cent (7 Mbps). In comparison, Singapore's residents enjoyed mobile speeds up to 104 Mbps/s and fixed to as much as 261 Mbps/s - that's the fastest internet in the world this year.

Bangladesh's internet affordability ranks 29th in the world. Residents can buy 1GB of mobile internet in Bangladesh for as cheap as 28 seconds of work per month, 45 per cent less than in India. However, compared to Israel, which has the most affordable mobile internet on the planet (5s per 1GB), Bangladeshis work 6 times more. Its affordability improved since the previous year, making people work 4 minutes 17 seconds less to afford the same mobile internet service.

The fixed broadband costs Bangladeshis citizens around 4 hours 32 minutes of their precious working time each month. To afford it, Bangladeshis have to work 14 times more than Israeli citizens, for whom the most affordable package costs only 19 min of work monthly. Since last year, broadband internet has become more affordable in Bangladesh, making people work 3 hours 48 minutes less to afford fixed broadband internet service.

Globally, broadband is getting less affordable each year. Looking at countries included in last year's index, people must work six minutes more to afford broadband internet in 2022. In some countries, such as Ivory Coast and Uganda, people work an average of 2 weeks to earn the cheapest fixed broadband internet package. The same trend was observed last year. With the current inflation, the pressure on low-income households that need the internet has become even heavier. Surfshark's study also found that countries with the poorest internet connection must work for it the longest.

The best countries to live in by the digital quality of life find as Israel topped the ranking followed by Denmark, Germany, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Finland, Japan, United Kingdom and South Korea in the top ten. Besides, only 18 countries of the top 50 are from outside Europe. Congo DR, Yemen and Ethiopia were listed at the bottom.  Israel had a mixed showing in the other categories. For internet quality, which looks at the speed and stability of mobile and broadband connections, Israel dropped to 21st place from 11th in 2021. Chile shot up to first place in this pillar, followed by Denmark and the United Arab Emirates. The US came in sixth. In electronic infrastructure, which determines how well-developed and inclusive a country’s existing electronic infrastructure may be, Israel ranked 28th, up one spot from 29th in 2021. Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands were in the top three.

In e-government, which measures how advanced and digitized a country’s government services are, Israel dropped down to the 33rd sport, down from 29th last year, and well below the US, which came in first place in this category, and all European countries. “Better e-government helps to minimize the bureaucracy, reduce corruption and increase the transparency of the public sector. It also improves the efficiency of public services and helps people save time, influencing the quality of their digital lives,” the organization explained in supporting materials.

A report of the Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission’s (BTRC) confirmed that the number of mobile internet users are 113.90 million in March 2022 while the total population of Bangladesh is around 166 million. The report said most of the people in Bangladesh have access to internet but the fact is these data did not reflect the reality. There are a significant number of people who use multiple mobile set. So, the data based on users of mobile internet can never portray the real picture.

A global platform for data, DATAREPORTAL revealed that in Bangladesh, till April 2022, 114 million people, or more than two-thirds (67.9 percent) of the population, are still without access to the internet. On the one hand, according to a Cable.co.uk analysis, Bangladesh has the cheapest per GB mobile data internet in Asia and is rated 8 in the world for delivering the cheapest rate in 2021. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics’ Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2019, just 37.6 per cent of Bangladeshi households have internet connectivity. Only 5.6 percent of families have a computer, according to the study.

The aforesaid data clearly indicates that the accessibility of internet and ICT devices is not equal to all people of Bangladesh. The urban people are the more beneficiary of the technology while the rural people are still struggling to be a proper digital citizen. "While countries with a strong digital quality of life tend to be those of advanced economies, the global study found that money doesn't always buy digital happiness," – explains Gabriele Racaityte-Krasauske, Head of PR at Surfshark.

Digital Bangladesh is one of the nation's dreams. In the last one decade, internet penetration in Bangladesh has gone up 100 times. This means that about 100 times more Bangladeshis are able to take advantage of the internet for information, education, recreation, business, and trade. Bangladesh has a hope to get benefits of digitization by 2030 since non-digital services will be non-existent both for government and private sector service providers.

The writer is Non-Government Adviser, Bangladesh Competition Commission. He can be contacted at mssiddiqui2035@gmail.com