Investigating Second-Level Digital Divides in Nationwide Mobile Service Consumption

Abstract

The widespread availability of inexpensive mobile broadband has democratized access to digital services in developed countries. While this has supposedly closed digital divides among the population, more subtle inequalities may still be present that are not driven by the accessibility to mobile services, rather by the heterogeneous capability of individuals to take advantage from those services. This paper focuses on the existence of imbalances in the consumption of mobile services across France using mobile traffic measurement data. We unveil that per-capita mobile traffic demands follow in fact a power law of the local population size, or, equivalently, there exists an emergent behavior that prompts subscribers living in larger urban areas to exhibit higher individual usage of mobile services. The result holds for global traffic, but is consistent across various mobile services, although with varying intensity. Our findings reveal the presence of potential second-level digital divides in developed countries and, surprisingly, show that such divides have steadily increased in France between 2014 and 2019. Moreover, we show how the phenomenon defies explanation by potential confounding factors like broad-band coverage, socioeconomic status, commuting, or inhabitant’s age, but has been indirectly mitigated by the recent containment measures enacted to combat COVID-19.