{"title":"The contribution of user-based subsidies to the impact and sustainability of telecenters - the eCenter project in Kyrgyzstan","authors":"M. Best, Dhanaraj Thakur, B. Kolko","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2009.5426709","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We examine the extent to which user-based subsidies can promote the sustainability and development impact of telecenters, where sustainability is defined in financial and social terms. We do this by looking at a coupon scheme used by the USAID funded eCenter network in Kyrgyzstan. The network consisted of partnerships with existing commercial computer centers which provided fee-based ICT services to their communities. The eCenter program temporarily provided subsidized coupons for Internet access and computer training to users of these centers.","PeriodicalId":180007,"journal":{"name":"2009 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2009-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"25","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"2009 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2009.5426709","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 25
Abstract
We examine the extent to which user-based subsidies can promote the sustainability and development impact of telecenters, where sustainability is defined in financial and social terms. We do this by looking at a coupon scheme used by the USAID funded eCenter network in Kyrgyzstan. The network consisted of partnerships with existing commercial computer centers which provided fee-based ICT services to their communities. The eCenter program temporarily provided subsidized coupons for Internet access and computer training to users of these centers.