21581 - SCTE Broadband August2022 COMPLETE v1

19 Vol. 44 No. 3 - September 2022 Issue from ubiquitous in developing countries and passwordless authentication will only widen the gulf between the rich and poor globally. He is positive about it, but it seems a remote destination given his current remit. “In terms of thinking about the privacy aspects [of internet access], there are some ways where we at A4AI touch upon those issues and generally, it fits within our broad approach of favouring consumer rights and encouraging consumers in encouraging governments to create protections for those consumer rights to be protected. That can span from things such as mobile number portability, which is kind of a closer issue to us.” Their more immediate issues are around affordability. The A4AI graph below illustrates just how irrelevant passwordless authentication is in LDC’s (less developed countries), where ownership of a smartphone is so prohibitive at over half their monthly income, it renders the possibility fairly unlikely at all. That’s in addition to domestic internet access, Teddy explains. “You can start to see the huge disparities between the richest who are paying fractions of a percent of their monthly income to afford data, versus those at the bottom who are having to pay up to 30% of their monthly income.” 80% of household income on a phone and data in developing countries? FIDO’s hopes and dreams are a world away from the real life of A4AI’s gloomy statistics. Down the line, Teddy diplomatically argues, it is good to see these measures kicking in in the developed world as ultimately the benefits FIDO are pushing for will trickle down to the Pacific Islands, for example, but it is a long way off. In countries where there is a distinct gender imbalance, such as the now Taliban- controlled Afghanistan, women and girls are prevented from receiving an education at all, so their access to the internet is prohibited by them being even able to read. Another concern is personal security. This latest announcement effectively places our own identities into the hands of a few big tech companies; should we wish to migrate from an iPhone to an Android phone, for example, moving all our passwords over is not straightforward. For those of us using the internet all day every day in our daily lives, that could mean hundreds of passwords, and FIDO admit that in their mission to provide internet security and prevent hacks, their provision currently falls short. This means those passwords will have to be manually moved across one by one. Such a process could take customers weeks, months, if it happens at all. Laborious and off-putting it certainly is, and it will almost certainly prevent that kind of fluid movement between providers that consumers scte long read Average Cost of a Smartphone, as % of Average Monthly Income All Countries North America Latin America & Caribbean East Asia & Pacific Middle East & North Africa Europe & Central Asia South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa LDCs 50% 55% 60% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Figure 1: Smartphone Affordability by Region. Source: Alliance for Affordable Internet