l infrastructures will come into being. The key impact of technology - in lowering cost - is being implemented in Internet models of pricing of voice, with voice over IP (VoIP). A whole new infrastructure lies in the future driven by far lower cost pricing. Such an infrastructure also requires high-speed access so the advent of updating technologies for the copper local loop (xDSL) and wireless access technologies for the local loop will be increasingly important. Fibre optics can be considered as a major technology factor and the continuing advance in propagation capacity with new variations of wave division multiplexing (WDM) will continue to reduce costs per channel by orders of magnitude. In hand with this is the enormous expansion in ICT usage with Internet access which is driving infrastructure investments and its usage, as shown in the table below, even for areas such as Africa. Table 2.8. World Internet usage (September 2005) and population statistics¹ Usage growth Population Population Internet usage, % population World users World regions 2000-05 (2005 est.) % of world latest data (penetration) Africa 896 721 874 14.00 23 867 500 428.70 3 622 994 130 56.40 327 066 713 186.10 34.20 Europe 731 018 523 11.40 273 262 955 165.10 37.40 28.50 Middle East 260 814 179 21 422 500 305.40 North America 328 387 059 223 779 183 107.00 68.10 23.40 Latin America/Caribbean 546 723 509 70 699 084 291.31 12.90 Oceania/Australia 33 443 448 17 655 737 131.70 52.80 World total 420 102 722 100.00 957 753 672 165.30 14.90 100.00 1. Internet usage and world population statistics updated 30 September 2005. Demographics Population numbers based on World-Gazetteer Web site. Internet usage information data from Nielsen//NetRatings, International Telecommunication Union, 2005, and Miniwatts International, LLC, ww.internetworldstats.com Perhaps the key pure technology advance is in forms of radio propagation for broadband data with efficient spectrum usage using advanced digital signal processing. Greater computer power combined with