The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent emergency measures had a fundamental
and disruptive impact on societies and, in particular, on the educational sector. The transition of the
modality of educational delivery from face-to-face to online occurred within days; this research study
considered the concepts of digital trust and digital access, using structuration, postmodernism, and
critical social theory as lenses to understand Higher Education (HE) student experiences during the
first wave of the lockdown. The study compared these aspects in Hungary, South Africa, and Wales
(UK) with different digital and network readiness indices. The digital development of the countries is
presented using both the Digital Intelligence and Network Readiness indices. The research approach
was cross-country, international, comparative, inductive, and quantitative
