Volume 45, Number 2, 2022 Accès au très haut débit et développement territorial en période d'incertitude Broadband access and territorial development in times of uncertainty Guest-edited by Chloé Duvivier and Cédric Brunelle

FR:

Le déploiement de la fibre optique est une condition nécessaire pour relever les défis posés par l’économie numérique du XXI^e siècle. Si 80 % des français se voient promettre à l’horizon 2022 d’avoir accès à la fibre à domicile, nous savons encore peu de choses sur les disparités locales et régionales que cela pourrait occasionner. Dans cet article, nous essayons, en nous basant sur des jeux de données hétérogènes, de développer une méthode permettant d’estimer les besoins des populations en connexion très haut débit afin de les confronter à la présence ou non de la fibre optique sur leur territoire. Parmi nos principaux résultats, nous montrons qu’il existe de fortes disparités territoriales dans l’accès et dans les besoins, certaines communes notamment péri-urbaines, représentant presque 3 millions d’habitants, pourraient être, au regard de leurs besoins, particulièrement fragilisées par l’absence de fibre optique.

EN:

The deployment of fiber optics is a prerequisite for meeting the challenges of the 21^st century digital economy. Though 80% of the French population has been promised access to fiber optics in their home by 2022, we still know little about the local and regional disparities this could entail. In this article, using heterogeneous datasets, we attempt to develop a method for estimating people’s need for very high-speed connections, in order to compare them with the presence or absence of fiber optics in their territory. Among our main findings, we show that there are major territorial disparities in access and needs, and that certain communes, particularly those on the outskirts of towns and cities, representing almost 3 million inhabitants, could be particularly vulnerable to the absence of fiber optics, given their needs.

EN:

The digital divide in Canada has gained significant attention from policymakers and the public in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic enhances the vulnerability of residents in rural and Indigenous communities that lack high-speed Internet access which affects their residents’ ability to participate in an online work and learning environment. However, digital inequalities also remain an issue in urban settings despite the physical infrastructure that is usually in place to connect to high-speed Internet. The federal government has launched several funding initiatives at the end of 2020; however, this paper argues that the current federal policy strategy to address the digital divide is insufficient. By drawing on the intersectional character of the digital divide, which is interlinked with other types of socio-economic inequalities, this paper investigates why the federal broadband development approach remains problematic. As the digital divide in Canada persists, this paper explores current federal funding initiatives and their effectiveness in supporting broadband deployment across rural and Indigenous communities. The analysis shows inequalities regarding broadband access and funding distribution in Canada which also stem from a lack of democratic efficacy during federal hearings.

EN:

Since the last decade of the twentieth century, internet access has become a sine qua non for businesses. IT as well as online commerce have been growing fast over the past decades, and many other sectors also depend more and more on internet access; even industrial services such as design and warehousing, to name but two examples, rely on and benefit from cooperation at a distance. The global boost in teleworking and particularly teleconferencing following the Covid-19 pandemic has shown how important reliable connections are.

Governments have over the past decade invested in improving their connections to the worldwide internet. Yet it is not clear whether economic clustering in fact is attracted to well-connected locations. We therefore test empirically whether the level of connectedness to the global IT infrastructure has a correlation with subsequent economic growth in sectors that use such infrastructure, or even depend on it.

We do this using a panel of US cities, in which we zoom in on a few sectors that can use the infrastructure and compare them against the background of other sectors in the same cities. As a measure for the quality of local connections, we employ a unique method: we use the latency (ping times), a network metric usually spurned in favour of the more common bandwidth.

FR:

Bien qu’il soit admis qu’Internet a des effets importants sur la façon dont les régions se développent économiquement, les études restent partagées son impact réel. À l’aube d’un élargissement des politiques de connectivité, quels impacts la mise en place de l’Internet haute vitesse dans les territoires du Québec a-t-elle eu sur la création et la fermeture d’établissements entre 2005 et 2019 ? En nous basant sur un modèle de doubles différences avec appariement par score de propension, nous isolons l’effet de l’implantation de l’Internet haute vitesse (Câble/DSL et Fibre) sur la création et les fermetures d’établissements. Les estimations sont réalisées pour tous les secteurs industriels confondus, ainsi que pour sept secteurs spécifiques. Les résultats montrent que l’accès aux technologies haut débit comme le Câble et la DSL a significativement augmenté la création et réduit le nombre de fermetures d’établissements dans l’ensemble des industries. L’accès à la Fibre, en revanche, a significativement réduit la création d’établissements et augmenté les fermetures, de façon globale pour l’ensemble des industries, avec des effets variés selon les secteurs. Ces résultats confirment que l’accès au haut débit est un enjeu clé pour le développement économique territorial, mais mettent en évidence une hétérogénéité des effets selon le type d’activité, le territoire et la technologie implantée.

EN:

While it is acknowledged that the Internet has a significant impact on the way regions develop economically, studies remain divided as to its actual impact. At the dawn of an expanding set of connectivity policies, what impacts has the implementation of high-speed Internet in Quebec territories had on the creation and closure of establishments between 2005 and 2019? Based on a difference-in-difference estimator with propensity score matching, we isolate the effect of the implementation of high-speed Internet (Cable/DSL and fiber optics) on the creation and closure of establishments. Estimates are produced for all industrial sectors combined, as well as for seven specific sectors. The results show that access to broadband technologies such as Cable and DSL has significantly increased the number of new establishments and reduced the number of closures in all industries. Access to fiber optics, on the other hand, significantly reduced the number of new establishments and increased the number of closures, across all industries, with varying effects by sector. These results confirm that broadband access is a key issue for regional economic development, while also highlighting the heterogeneity of the effects depending on the type of activity, the region and the technology implemented.