Bridging the digital divide in rural areas

Abstract

Recently, there has been a rapid development of information and communication technologies, in this regard, inequality between residents of urban and rural areas is increasingly felt. Bridging the digital divide is an important and time-consuming task. The development of telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas will allow access to various digital platforms, remote work technologies, distance education, and will also increase the availability of medical services. The digital divide is more pronounced in rural than urban areas. Currently, there are government programs aimed at eliminating the digital divide, including in rural areas. In accordance with these, the task of developing measures to reduce the digital divide becomes urgent.

The work carried out clustering of settlements, which makes it possible to identify the occurrence of distortion of integral ranges associated with the assignment of evaluation criteria to settlements. In order to assess the quantitative change in the digital inequality, an economic and mathematical model has been built. Measures are proposed that allow to reduce, but not completely eliminate the digital inequality, in view of the limited possibilities of bringing telecommunication services, as well as the peculiarities of providing services in rural areas.