Digital Innovation and Cross-Border Information Flows

Abstract

We are living in a world where information is commonly gathered online and transferred across borders. With the global economy going digital, cross-border bandwidth has increased 45 times in the past decade. In terms of absolute quantity, it has reached 211.3 terabits per second (Tbps) in 2014, up from 4.7 Tbps in 2005.1 Though the largest share of cross-border data flows (about three-quarters) are accounted for by internet content industries, cross-border data flows are crucial in almost every industrial sector. For example, cloud computing is now being used in a wide range of industries from internet services to manufacturing. It is a service providing IT functions such as data storage and software programs over the internet by external servers. The storage location is often neither known to users nor definable. It is therefore perceived as if data is kept somewhere in the "clouds". Through cloud computing, information are often transferred across borders and stored in servers outside national boundaries.