Title Page
Abstract
Contents
List of Abbreviations 12
I. Introduction 13
II. Ecuador: ICT Country Profile 15
III. Factors affecting Internet adoption in Latin America 23
3.1. Literature Review and Hypotheses 24
3.2. Methodology 29
3.3. Results 32
IV. Comparative Case Analysis 39
4.1. Framework for Analysis 40
4.2. Economy 41
4.2.1. Korea 41
4.2.2. Chile 43
4.2.3. Ecuador 45
4.3. E-government 49
4.3.1. Korea 49
4.3.2. Chile 52
4.3.3. Ecuador 55
4.4. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) 57
4.4.1. Korea 57
4.4.2. Chile 61
4.4.3. Ecuador 62
4.5. Comparative Analysis 65
V. Conclusions 72
5.1. Recommendations 72
5.2. Conclusions 73
5.3. Limitations and future work 74
References 75
Acknowledgments 80
Curriculum Vitae 82
Table 1: Internet Use Growth in Latin America. 30
Table 2: Descriptive Statistics of the Independent Variables. 32
Table 3: Results of Multiple Regression Analysis. 33
Table 4: Economic comparisons among the three countries. 66
Table 5: E-government comparison among three countries. 68
Table 6: ICT comparisons among three countries. 69
Figure 1: Map of the Republic of Ecuador 15
Figure 2: Telecommunication’s industry growth. 16
Figure 3: Composition of Telecommunication Industry 17
Figure 4: Urban and Rural telephone penetration 17
Figure 5: Internet penetration by provinces (%users and population) 18
Figure 6: PC’s market share 19
Figure 7: Internet, fix and mobile subscribers 20
Figure 8: Internet access cost comparison 2004-06 21
Figure 9: Current optical networks 22
Figure 10: Opposite Correlation between Mobile Phones and Internet users per 1000 people. 34
Figure 11: Correlation between GDP and Internet users per 1000 people. 35
Figure 12: Correlation between Availability of e-government services and Internet users per 1000 people. 36
Figure 13: Correlation between Availability of e-government services and Internet users per 1000 people. 36
Figure 14: Correlation between Internet Access in Schools and Internet users per 1000 people. 37
Figure 15: Correlation between Households with Television and Internet users per 1000 people. 38
Figure 16: South Korea’s economic recovery after 1997 42
Figure 17: Chile’s education expenditures 44
Figure 18: Ecuador’s education expenditures 46
Figure 19: The Ecuadorian trade statistics in 2006 48
Figure 20: Korea e-government trend (2002-2008) 50
Figure 21: Chilean’s e-government trend 53
Figure 22: Korean Informatization Policy 2006-2010. 60
Figure 23: ICT comparisons by countries 65
Figure 24: GDG growth rate by countries 67