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Thursday, October 14, 1999 Published at 12:09 GMT 13:09 UK
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Archive By BBC News Online's Kate Milner

Communication has never been easy in Mongolia.

Feedback
Low Graphics The country is nearly three times the size of France but
Help has a population density of 1.5/sq mile, one of the
lowest in the world. The Internet seems the natural
answer but the problem is less one of infrastructure
than the cost of getting online.
». UN Human Development
Report
!lNFORMATIONRICH The price to connect is » UN Development
certainly out of reach for most Programme Info 21
ordinary people. One ISP >. World Bank InfoDev
• Introduction
charges approximately £30 tf African Development
• The widening gap ($50) per month and that Forum
does not include the cost of fc. The first mile: Wiring the
Case studies the phone call. The average South and rural areas
GDP per capita is £1,359
($2,250).
• Burkina Faso
Mongolia * Plugged In
That's complicated by the » PEOPLink
Morocco gap between rich and poor.
» NTIA report: Falling
United States More than one third of the Through the Net
population lives in poverty. » CIA World Faclbook:
Outside the capital Burkina Faso
Ulaanbaatar, many areas still do not have telephone » African Virtual University
access. >. Virtual Souk
» Information and
The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme Communication
(APDIP), a United Nations-funded organisation based Technology. Mongolia
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is trying to help. ». Asia-Pacific Development
Information Programme
» The United Nations in
APDIP has launched Citizen Information Service Mongolia
Centers, where citizens in remote Aimags including » Soros Foundation:
areas of the Gobi desert, can now connect to the Mongolia
central government, apply for grants on-line, receive The BBC is not responsible
news, and obtain basic training in computing. for the content of external
internet sites.

The first step was a summit designed to explore

opportunities through IT. APDIP also set up a cyber

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1999/10/99/information_ri.../472445.st 07/05/2002
BBC News | Information rich information poor | The cost of communication Page 2 of 2

cafe in the UNDP building in Ulaanbaatar, to show

people what technology has to offer.

"We want to involve ordinary people," he said. "If they

cannot see the vision then we cannot make it work,"
said Atsushi Yamanaka who works for the UNDP.

"Young people are the ones who have to create this.

People are very eager to tap into new technology, but
they're not sure of how to best use it.

The programme's long-term aim is to encourage

businesses and colleges to take up information
technology and to build a culture of open information. It
has set targets for the next two to three years and is
building an action plan up to 2010.

But Mr Yamanaka said there were still problems in

Mongolia following the end of socialism and the
country's first democratic elections in July 1990.

"Under socialism there was a train every few days, so

people got letters every two days," he said. "Citizens
who had everything, all of a sudden they didn't have
anything. Now it can take two months for letters to get
through.

"The people are suffering a lack of information and a

lack of basic services."

But even as new technology takes hold, those in power

in Mongolia still have doubts. Changing people's
mindset is the hardest part.

"There needs to be a very top-level support." Said Mr

Yamanaka. "Email is not seen as an official document.
It's not like a paper agreement that you can sign and
seal.

"The government is keen to use email but they ask,

'What is its status, how official is it?'"

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