A report by GSMA Intelligence, produced with Huawei and published at UNESCO's Digital Learning Week, says 38% of people who are covered by mobile broadband remain offline, and attributes that largely to a shortage of digital skills. The research, titled "Bridging the Divide: Enhancing Digital Literacy in the AI Era," estimates that 3.1 billion people are affected by a divide driven by gaps in digital skills, user trust and AI literacy.

According to the report, artificial intelligence can act as both a bridge and a barrier. Voice assistants and applications that work with images, audio and video can allow users with low literacy to avoid typing, the authors said, but they also raise the security and critical-thinking standards needed to take part safely, requiring users to understand data privacy and to identify risks such as fraud and deepfakes. Citing World Bank statistics, the report puts wage premiums for GenAI literacy at up to 36%, above the returns it records for digital and traditional AI skills.

Physical mobile broadband coverage reaches 96% of people worldwide, and industry projections cited in the report suggest that closing the capability gap could add around $3.5 trillion to global GDP by 2030, with more than 90% of those gains going to low- and middle-income countries. The authors warn that without targeted interventions in basic digital training, rapid AI adoption risks entrenching existing inequalities even in areas with full network coverage.

The report favours community-based delivery models and cites Huawei's Skills on Wheels initiative, including its solar-powered DigiTruck mobile classrooms, which bring hardware, rural connectivity and hands-on training such as AI literacy to off-grid regions. Courses delivered by Skills on Wheels projects have reached more than 130,000 people across 21 countries since 2019, the report says, and a study by Kenya's Ministry of Information, Communications and Digital Economy found that 79% of DigiTruck trainees surveyed had passed their new skills on to family members and peers.

The authors call on policymakers, telecom operators and technology vendors to work together on four priorities. Tim Hatt, head of research and consultancy at GSMA Intelligence, said connectivity alone was not sufficient and that digital literacy could no longer be defined by fixed thresholds. Gavin Allen, Executive Editor-in-Chief at Huawei, said mobile classrooms had shown their value in helping underserved populations get past barriers to technology. A new DigiTruck programme is to launch in France this autumn, covering several cities in the Île-de-France region and targeting low-income and underserved communities with digital skills training. The full report is available on the GSMA Intelligence research portal.