Publication: 2017 ICT Backbone Sector: Private Participation in Infrastructure
Date
2018-12-01
ISSN
Published
2018-12-01
Author(s)
World Bank Group
Abstract
Starting in 2017, PPI investment has
been reported for ICT-backbone infrastructure (such as
fiber-optic cables (land-based/submarine cables), mobile
towers, base stations and other hard assets) with an active
government component, whereby the government is involved by
way of being a contracting authority (i.e., a party to a
concession agreement) or the full or part-owner of the
assets. Information was also back-filled for the previous 10
years based on the new methodology, therefore this note
covers a 10-year period. Tracking private investment in this
sector will be increasingly important due to the critical
role that ICT plays in development. With some seven billion
mobile connections and 60-percent coverage of 3G networks
worldwide, the ICT sector is critical for disruptive
innovation and for leapfrogging development and enhancing
the impact of the fourth Industrial Revolution. In 2017,
private investment in ICT amounted to USD 3.0 billion across
six projects (including one cross-border project). This
marked a significant increase over the investment level of
USD 462 million in 2016, as well as the previous 10-year
average (2007-2016) of USD 1.3 billion. The 3.2-percent
share of ICT in global PPI investment in 2017 marked the
second highest share of the last 10 years, after the
four-percent share in 2008. However, the ICT sector only
accounted for an average of 1.3 percent of global PPI
investment over the last 10 years. Overall, there were 37
ICT-backbone projects recorded since 2008, totaling USD 14.1
billion. Of six projects in 2017, two fell into the category
of mobile-network infrastructure development. The remaining
projects were submarine/land fiber-optic cable-installation
projects. The two network development projects, namely the
USD 1.5 billion 4G-network-development project in Myanmar
and the USD 946 million national-mobile-network development
project in Mexico, contributed more than 80 percent of the
total ICT investment. The average project size in 2017 (USD
500 million) was almost five times higher than in 2016,
because all the projects in 2016 were cable-installation
projects, which are typically smaller than
network-development projects. However, the average project
size in the previous ten-year period was USD 381 million.
Citation
“World Bank Group. 2018. 2017 ICT Backbone Sector: Private Participation in Infrastructure. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31035 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”