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An overview of digital service taxation

raul Katz

Geneva: ITU (2025), xi, 36 pp.

"The study’s first major conclusion is that taxes imposed both on operators and on consumers remain in place in many countries around the world. At least 74 countries impose taxes on service providers, whether environmentally related, import duties on equipment or VAT on equipment purchases. Simil ... arly, 145 countries impose VAT on mobile services, while 74 apply import duties on mobile devices. Secondly, some nuanced geographic patterns in terms of taxation approaches can be teased out from the data. The group of countries exempting equipment purchases from taxation include advanced economies and some less developed countries. This would indicate that this group is not only composed of countries that do not require equipment taxation to increase revenues but also countries that prioritize maximization of network coverage (stimulated by lower equipment taxes) over tax collection. That said, there appears to be countries, mostly concentrated in the developing world, with some middle-income economies, that still prioritize tax collection from import duties on equipment. Thirdly, unlike with network equipment, many countries were identified that exempt consumer devices from import duty or device-specific taxes. Furthermore, several developing countries were found to tax the import of devices at an extremely high rate. However, some countries have established consumer device taxation approaches aimed at reducing the purchasing acquisition cost. At the other end, some countries appear to have imposed high taxation on consumer devices. In addition to taxes on devices, affordability of telecommunications/ICTs for consumers is affected by VAT paid on mobile telecommunications services, a fairly common practice across countries. Of all services to which VAT is applied, the most prevalent service is outgoing international traffic, where rates range between 2.75 per cent and 20 per cent. Finally, many countries have enacted a digital service tax to address perceived gaps in corporate income-tax systems. This approach imposes a tax on gross receipts derived from digital advertising, data mining and other types of digital platform revenue. A few countries have already implemented national approaches aimed at tackling profit shifting by digital platforms. While many countries did not report the application of digital service taxes in the ITU Tariff Policies Survey, of the 115 nations that provided a response, only 17 reported applying a digital service tax, and the percentage applied varies from 3% (Fance) to 21% (Argentina). This limited evidence prevents us from understanding what the current trend is in this domain." (Conclusion) more

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Communications, media and internet concentration in India 2019-2021
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Adrian Athique, Vigneswara Ilavarasan, Vibodh Parthasarathi, Tamanna Sharma, Pradip Thomas, M. Vyshakh

Global Media & Internet Concentration Project (GMIC) (2024), iii, 88 pp.

"During the survey period of 2019-2021, the Indian media economy grew by 21% to reach gross revenues of $US 66.52bn (excluding publishing). The overall pattern of growth was unevenly distributed across four component divisions: telecoms and internet infrastructure with growth of 23% (2021 revenues o ... more

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Communications, media and internet concentration in Mexico, 2019-2021

Rodrigo Gómez, Argelia Muñoz-Larroa, Orlando Rizo Mendoza, Carlos Pérez Cerón

Global Media & Internet Concentration Project (GMIC) (2024), 55 pp.

"The analysis in this report relies on a detailed and comprehensive analysis across 22 distinct markets within three broad sets of industries: (a) Telecommunications and internet access, (b) Online and traditional media services, and (c) Core internet sectors. Through this structured approach, the r ... more

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Communications, media and internet concentration in Turkey, 2019-2021

Bilge Yesil, Sinem Aydinli

Global Media & Internet Concentration Project (GMIC) (2024), 54 pp.

"Turkey’s network media economy witnessed substantial growth between 2019 and 2021, especially in the wireless, digital music, digital games, and internet advertising sectors. All told, revenue increased sharply over this period from TRY 65.7 billion to TRY 95.1 billion. This, in turn, was nearly ... more

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Communications, media and internet concentration in Chile, 2019-2021

Guillermo Mastrini, Martín Becerra, Ana Bizberge, Ornela Carboni, Agustín Espada, Florencia Sosa

Global Media & Internet Concentration Project (GMIC) (2024), 27 pp.

"Between 2019 and 2021, the combined income of all the sectors studied increased by 44%. The sector with the most significant percentage growth is internet advertising, impacting other traditional media industries (newspapers, radio, and television) which have experienced a decrease in relative mark ... more

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Telecommunication networks and infrastructure resilience assessment in Haiti

Gregory Domond

Geneva: ITU (2024), xii, 96 pp.

[.] the report examines three pivotal areas of assessment. First, there was an evaluation of the damage to Haiti’s networks and infrastructure after the 2021 earthquake, along with the restoration of telecommunication services. Second, the assessment focused on Haiti’s country-level resilience, ... more

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Media in Africa: Issues and Critiques

Toks Oyedemi, René A. Smith (eds.)

New York; London: Routledge (2024), 232 pp.

"Featuring contributions from global scholars, that represent both new and established voices on the African continent and the diaspora, this volume explores themes of decolonization, media freedom, media censorship, identity, representation, pluralism, media framing, political economy of the media ... more

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Privacy in Iraq: Case of Telecommunication Companies

Baghdad: Tech 4 Peace (2023), 26 pp.

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‘Data Sovereignty’ or ‘Data Colonialism’? Exploring the Chinese Involvement in Africa’s ICTs: A Document Review on Kenya

Stefano Calzati

Journal of Contemporary African Studies, volume 40, issue 2 (2022), pp. 270-285

"Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become a crucial sector of China–Africa relations. As scholars have noted, Africa’s 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) risks transforming into a new ‘scramble’ with foreign actors harnessing Africa’s data. The present article explores th ... more

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The Huawei Model: The Rise of China's Technology Giant

Yun Wen

Urbana; Chicago; Springfield: University of Illinois Press (2020), x, 239 pp.

"In 2019, the United States' trade war with China expanded to blacklist the Chinese tech titan Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. The resulting attention showed the information and communications technology (ICT) firm entwined with China's political-economic transformation. But the question remained: why ... more

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Numérique, espaces et sociétés en Afrique

Dabié Désiré Axel Nassa (ed.)

Paris: L'Harmattan (2019), 403 pp.

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International Communication: Continuity and Change

Daya Kishan Thussu

London et al.: Bloomsbury Academic, 3rd ed. (2019), xxii, 369 pp.

"This book maps out the expansion of media and telecommunications corporations within the macro-economic context of liberalisation, deregulation and privitisation. It then goes on to explore the impact of such growth on audiences in different cultural contexts and from regional, national and interna ... more

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Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change
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Lisa Brooten, Jane Madlyn McElhone, Gayathry Venkiteswaran (eds.)

Singapore: ISEAS (2019), xix, 407 pp.

"Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change is the first volume to overview the country’s contemporary media landscape, providing a critical assessment of the sector during the complex and controversial political transition. Moving beyond the focus on journalism and freedom of th ... more

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The Mobile Economy: Latin America and the Caribbean 2018

London: GSMA (2018), 57 pp.

"By mid-2018, there were 442 million unique mobile subscribers across Latin America and the Caribbean, accounting for 68% of the population. The region is characterised by varying levels of mobile subscriber penetration. A number of countries (such as Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are approaching sa ... more

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Mediatized China-Africa Relations: How Media Discourses Negotiate the Shifting of Global Order

Shubo Li

Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan (2018), xv, 218 pp.

"This cutting edge book explores the role of the media in the highly disputed area of China-Africa relations, notably how various aspects of the issue have been portrayed, negotiated and contested in media and academic discourses. As Africa's biggest trading partner and creditor, China explores Afri ... more

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Enabling the Digital Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa: What Role for Policy Reforms?

Jose Lopez-Calix, Michel Rogy et al.

World Bank Group (2017), 61 pp.

"I am glad to introduce the third edition of a series of reports aimed at discussing macroeconomic developments in the Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea, Mali, and Niger. This series intends to foster public debates on key macroeconomic and fiscal policy options in support of poverty reduction. ... more

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Last Mile Connectivity in Emerging Markets

Developing Telecoms (2016), 28 pp.

"This report focuses on the difficulties faced by operators in emerging markets looking to deliver data bandwidth cost effectively to challenging locations, including remote communities and busy cities. While the challenges are myriad, improvements in technology are increasingly making the business ... more

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Evolución del mercado de telecomunicaciones móviles en el Perú

Rozzana Loaiza Flower

Lima: Organismo Supervisor de Inversión Privada en Telecomunicaciones (OSIPTEL) (2016), 82 pp.

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Emerging Markets Telecom Trends 2015

Developing Telecoms (2015), 48 pp.

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ICT Economic Impact Assessment

Philibert de Mercey, Daniel Skillings, Camille Le Coz

Altai Consulting; USAID (2014), 90 pp.

"The ICT sector is one of few undeniable success stories in Afghanistan’s development over the past 12 years. In 2002, telecommunications services were virtually non-existent, restricted to a very small number of fixed-line connections and satellite communications were unaffordable to the general ... more

Communications, media and internet concentration in India 2019-2021 Top Insights

Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change Top Insights

Communications, media and internet concentration in India 2019-2021
Top Insights

Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change
Top Insights