While many thought of cloud computing as the “great equalizer” when it comes to poor versus rich countries, that does not seem to be the case.   A lack of access to broadband and data servers in developing countries limits the scope of cloud computing according to a UN report.

“Many low-income countries rely on mobile broadband networks that are not ideal for cloud computing because of their low-speed, and access to affordable broadband is especially poor in the least developed countries (LDCs), it says. Another factor that keeps developing countries from fully benefiting from cloud computing is a growing divide in the number of data centres — facilities that house computer infrastructure; and store, manage and process digital data.”

The fact that cloud computing depends on network infrastructure, seems to limit its success in emerging countries.    While wireless is typically there, cloud computing typically requires higher bandwidth and lower latency to be usable.

While not able to solve the problem of network infrastructure upgrades, cloud providers should create services that take the bandwidth limitations into account.    Perhaps designing cloud services that limit the amount of information passing back over the network, or other approaches to adapt to the limitations.