IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-333-98280-8_17.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Which countries would have most to gain from a GEMs launch?

In: Net Benefit

Author

Listed:
  • Wingham Rowan

Abstract

The potential unpopularity of a raw online marketplace in the first world notwithstanding, GEMs is unlikely to be launched in a developed country. It is in ‘second world’ nations that the opposition to such a move by government could be most readily overcome. The possibility of GEMs in a far off country might be enthusiastically supported by investors who would bitterly contest the same project on their home ground. Unlike, say, online entertainment applications GEMs can operate with very basic displays to users and would not require substantial bandwidth or advanced technology in terminals. The personal computers with 486 processors now being piled into skips across Europe and the US and the copper wire discarded for high-density fibre optics could provide the spine for a usable, if not particularly glossy, GEMs in a developing nation. Many of these countries are propagating the awareness and technical backbone required for a GEMs service. Internet access and usage is accelerating faster in developing countries than elsewhere.70 In China, for example, twice as much fibre optic is now being laid as in the USA, encouraging the number of Net accounts to double in the first half of 1998.71 The Prime Minister of India (which has an existing middle class of 200 million people) has set out to reverse his country’s slow take up of the Internet with a national task force designed to make the country ‘an Information Technology superpower’. 72 Brazil is now committed to growth through privatization deals to create commercially driven infrastructure. With a favourable government any of these countries could achieve much from launching a first GEMs service.

Suggested Citation

  • Wingham Rowan, 1999. "Which countries would have most to gain from a GEMs launch?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Net Benefit, chapter 0, pages 160-164, Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-333-98280-8_17
    DOI: 10.1057/9780333982808_17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-333-98280-8_17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.