In June 2005, ITU launched an important new development initiative designed to bring access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) to the estimated one billion people worldwide for whom making a simple telephone call remains far out of reach.

Dubbed Connect the World, the initiative creates a new results-focused development community comprising 22 founding partners from the public and private sectors, UN agencies and civil society.

Initial partners include the governments of Egypt, France and Senegal, the European Commission, the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion, leading equipment manufacturers including Alcatel, Huawei, Infosys, Intel and Microsoft, major telecoms carriers such as KDDI and Telefónica, UN agencies including UNESCO, the UN Fund for International Partnership, and the Universal Postal Union, and a range of innovative players from civil society.

Established within the context of the forthcoming UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), this innovative new multi-stakeholder community is focused on harnessing existing expertise to scale-up development projects and accelerate efforts to bridge the digital divide.

"It is not ICTs that will solve the problem of the digital divide, it is people and especially people working in partnership," said ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi. "While Connect the World is about harnessing the power of ICTs, it’s also about harnessing the power of people working together to connect the unconnected."

Connect the World comprises three key Building Blocks — Enabling Environment, Infrastructure & Readiness, and Applications & Services — which together constitute the primary areas that need to be addressed when developing concrete measures to accelerate ICT development.

All Connect the World founding partners have current development projects in one or more of these areas. Additional partners will also be actively sought in areas not adequately covered, to ensure underserved communities get what they need where it’s needed most.

At present, ITU estimates that around 800’000 villages — or 30% of all villages worldwide — are still without any kind of connection. Even in areas where basis services are available, ITU figures show that the 942 million people living in the world’s developed economies enjoy five times better access to fixed and mobile phone services, nine times better access to Internet services, and own 13 times more PCs than the 85% of the world’s population living in low and lower-middle income countries.

By providing an international platform to showcase the many innovative and successful development initiatives already being undertaken, ITU hopes Connect the World will spur organizations at every level to get actively involved in development.

"Every Connect the World partner is currently working to make a real difference. I applaud their efforts, and hope the projects they are showcasing within this initiative will serve to stimulate new partnerships and inspire others to join us and to launch their own development activities," said ITU’s Utsumi.