EDISON Alliance Impact Report 2024

Affordability and financing4.3 Objective Reduce the cost of fixed/mobile broadband, internet-enabled devices and online services. 196,086,852* lives improvedProgress Ninety-five percent of the world’s population has access to connectivity, yet a third of those people remain offline. At the EDISON Alliance, we have identified affordability as our biggest challenge to connecting people within reach of existing networks. People cannot afford the handsets and devices to use the connectivity. As the economic pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic receded, a cost-of-living crisis emerged in economies worldwide. Growing demand for labour and resources, combined with strained supply chains, caused an inflation spike that central banks are navigating methodically. People in poorer regions have proven the most vulnerable and these are the economies where we see the digital divide at its widest. Nearly 2.4 billion of the people still offline live in low- and middle-income countries. They need help to participate in the digital economy. The ethos of the EDISON Alliance is to help form, advise and manage public-private partnerships to determine the solutions to address affordability, establish plans to make devices available and ensure everyone is accounted for in the ecosystem. We have to come together to solve for the affordability of trusted digital devices and online services so that everyone can participate successfully in the world that we’re creating.Closing the digital divide is a vital part of achieving each of the 17 United Nations SDGs. Beyond that, it gives every person the opportunity to benefit from digital technologies. We have to work together to create solutions and devices that will allow the last people to be connected. Rima Qureshi Chief Strategy Officer, Verizon; Vice-Chair,EDISON Alliance * pie chart represents a total of 1 billion lives EDISON Alliance Impact Report January 2024 19 Contents