A Review of Theoretical Approaches on Diffusion Analysis : Discussing Issues Involved in the Adoption of ICT Services in a Complex Socio-Economic Context

The diffusion and adoption of telecommunications (ICT) services has been strategically given much importance within the national agendas and policy debates; however traditionally the process of diffusion and adoption has been largely considered as a deterministic, mechanistic and linear process; controlled either by the local authorities (policy makers and regulators) or by the telecom suppliers (service providers). The participation of users in the development of innovation and its subsequent adoption has not been given much attention beyond their marginal roles either as passive adopters or silent rejecters of the ‘exogenously' diffused technological products. Furthermore, past literature on the diffusion analysis is found to be predominantly overwhelmed with the statistical analysis and mathematical modeling, generally designed to explain the adoption patterns in the focused units of adoption; however by and large, these theoretical approaches often miss the critically important element of the diffusion analysis which deals with the resulting impacts i.e. the intended and unintended social, educational, political and economic consequences of the adopted services upon the end-users or targeted user communities. Hence, this paper argues for the need of a renewed focus and attention by diffusion scholars, policy makers, regularity authorities and telecom suppliers to understand and address the key underlying issues involved in the diffusion analysis