Americans use a range of approaches to keep informed about what is happening in their communities and online activities have been added to the mix. Face-to-face encounters and phone calls remain the most frequent methods of interaction with neighbors. At the same time, internet tools are gaining ground in community-oriented communications. In a poll conducted at the end of last year, we asked about online connections to communities and neighbors and found that in the twelve months preceding our survey:

- 22% of all adults (representing 28% of internet users) signed up to receive alerts about local issues (such as traffic, school events, weather warnings or crime alerts) via email or text messaging.

- 20% of all adults (27% of internet users) used digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues.

(Source: Pew Research Center)

Full story

Pew Research Center

Text messaging rises sharply among teens and is now their most frequent form of communication with friends. 72% of those ages 12-17 now are texters and the average young text user exchanges 1,500 texts per month.

Cell phones are mixed blessing to American families, bringing safety and connection along with disruption and irritation. Daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18 months from 38% of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008, to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009. In fact, text messaging has become the most frequent way that teens reach their friends, surpassing face-to-face meetings, email, instant messaging and voice calling as a daily communications tool. However, cell phone calling is still the preferred mode that teens use to connect with their parents.

(Source: Pew Research Center)

Full story

Pew Research Center

The United Nations (UN) recently launched the e-Government Survey 2008: From E-Government to Connected Governance assessing the e-government readiness of the 192 Member States of the UN. The study results are based on a quantitative composite index of e-readiness, including website assessment, telecommunication infrastructure, and human resource endowment.

One of the key outcomes of the study is that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help reinvent government in such a way that existing institutional arrangements can be restructured and new innovative approaches can flourish, paving the way for a transformed government.

The focus of the report, in Part II, is e-government initiatives directed at improving operational efficiency through the integration of back-office functions. Whilst such initiatives, if successful, will deliver benefits to citizens, the primary purpose is to improve the effectiveness of government and governmental agencies. Models of back-office integration, irrespective of the delivery mode, fall into three broad categories: single function integration, cross functional integration, and back-office to front-office integration. The level of complexity, expressed in terms of the number of functions within the scope and number of organizations involved, is the primary factor influencing a successful outcome - with a tendency amongst the more ambitious projects to fail to deliver the full anticipated benefits. The key variables involved in the delivery of back-office integration are the people, processes and technology required.

The report is available at the website of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the UN's Public Administration Programme. For more information, click here.

According to a report from vendor Mcafee, the growing number of cyber criminals in areas of Asia and Eastern-Europe is the result of a lack of IT jobs for qualified professionals. Joe Telafici, vice president of operations at Mcafee says that "the motivation to engage in illegal behavior is strong in Eastern Europe where technical skills were widely taught during the Cold War but economic opportunities are limited. The same is true in Asia, where population growth has stretched strong economic performance to the limits." In China, 43 per cent of IT graduates are unemployed, and hacker "training" web sites are creating a pool of effective malware authors and paying them like a legitimate business.

Read the full article here.

OECD, through its Working Party on Indicators for the Information Society, developed Measuring the Impacts of ICT Using Official Statistics. This paper presents available (mainly official) statistics on the impacts of ICT and discusses a number of statistical issues associated with ICT impact measurement. It attempts to place ICT impacts measurement into an Information Society conceptual framework and suggests a number of areas for further work.

Read the full paper here.

According to Security experts at Sophos, 6,000 new infected webpages are discovered every day, 83 per cent of which belonging to innocent companies and individuals that are unaware of their sites being compromised. Sophos further reports that the well-known iFrame vulnerability in Internet Explorer remained the preferred vector for malware attacks throughout last year with China (51.4 per cent) and the US (23.4 per cent) leading in the net security firm's list of malware-hosting countries. According to PandaLabs, "around half a million computers are infected by bots every day... [and] approximately 11 percent of computers worldwide have become a part of criminal botnets, which are responsible for 85 percent of all spam sent."

Read the full article on The Register.
Read relevant article on Slashdot.

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs recently released the UN e-Government Survey 2008: From e-Government to Connected Governance, which presents an assessment of the new role of the government in enhancing public service delivery, while improving the efficiency and productivity of government processes and systems. It comprises two parts including a section which presents the findings of the UN e-Government Survey 2008 and a section focusing on the ‘how to’ approach connected governance.

For more information on the survey, visit the Global E-Government Survey 2008 website.
Access the complete survey here.

The CSI Survey 2007, the 12th of its kind, by the Computer Security Institute, aims to raise the level of security awareness, as well as help determine the scope of computer crime in the United States. The survey strongly suggests in this year’s results that mounting threats are beginning to materialize as mounting losses. The survey results are based on the responses of 494 computer security practitioners in U.S. corporations, government agencies, financial institutions, medical institutions and universities.

Among the key findings from this year’s survey are:

• The average annual loss reported in this year’s survey shot up to $350,424 from $168,000 the previous year. Not since the 2004 report have average losses been this high.
• Almost one-fifth (18 percent) of those respondents who suffered one or more kinds of security incident further said they’d suffered a “targeted attack,” defined as a malware attack aimed exclusively at their organization or at organizations within a small subset of the general population.
• Financial fraud overtook virus attacks as the source of the greatest financial losses. Virus losses, which had been the leading cause of loss for seven straight years, fell to second place. If separate categories concerned with the loss of customer and proprietary data are lumped together, however, then that combined category would be the second-worst cause of financial loss. Another significant cause of loss was system penetration by outsiders.
• Insider abuse of network access or e-mail (such as trafficking in pornography or pirated software) edged out virus incidents as the most prevalent security problem, with 59 and 52 percent of respondents reporting each respectively.
• When asked generally whether they’d suffered a security incident, 46 percent of respondents said yes, down from 53 percent last year and 56 percent the year before.
• The percentage of organizations reporting computer intrusions to law enforcement continued upward after reversing a multi-year decline over the past two years, standing now at 29 percent as compared to 25 percent in last year’s report.

For the complete detailed survey results, click here.

ENISA recently launched its latest Position Paper, "Botnets - The Silent Threat", a 12-page paper identifying roles and structures of criminal organizations for creating and controlling botnets, and trends in this type of cyber crime as well as online tools to identify and counter malicious code. ENISA points out that browser exploits account for more than 60% of all infections, email attachments for 13%, operating system exploits for 11%, and downloaded Internet files for 9%. It also emphasizes that the main problem is uninformed users. ENISA, thus, calls for "a more coordinated, cross country cooperation among multi-national law enforcement agencies, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and software vendors" to combat botnets, and further adds that education of the everyday user is a key measure.

For further information, read ENISA's press release or access the full ENISA Position Paper.

USA Today reports on the current spam statistics, and reiterates how spam continues to exponentially increase despite anti-spam softwares, filters and legislations. According to market researcher IDC, "the total number of spam e-mail messages sent worldwide, 10.8 trillion, will surpass the number of person-to-person e-mails sent, 10.5 trillion." Spam sent is also said to have reached 60 billion to 150 billion messages a day. As for phishing, the Anti-Phishing Working Group said new phishing sites soared to 30,999 as of July 2007, from 14,191 in July 2006. MessageLabs adds that one in 87 e-mails is tagged as phishing scams now, compared with one in 500 a year ago.

The fight against spam has nonetheless expanded and grown too. Built-in spam defenses of Google's Gmail, social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace which enable users to control who has access to their personal profile, to exchange e-mail with friends, family and business associates, and phishing filters provided by Microsoft on its Internet Explorer browser are some of the common filters made available to users. In the same effort to stop spam, Yahoo, eBay and PayPal recently announced their use of DomainKeys, an e-mail-authentication technology. Other anti-spam technologies include CertifiedEmail from Goodmail Systems, a new breed of e-mail services, and Boxbe. "The multilayered-defense approach has worked to stop such scourges as image spam, which varied the content of individual messages — through colors, backgrounds, picture sizes or font types — to slip through spam filters. Image spam made up half of all spam in January. Since software makers came up with a solution, image spam has dropped to 8% of all spam, Symantec says."

Read the full article here.

The Anti-Malware Engineering Team, the team that builds the core antivirus, antispyware, anti-rootkit, and related technology used across a number of Microsoft products and technologies, posted on their blog recent "Storm" worm statistics based on the latest release of the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) developed and updated by Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center (MMPC). According to the Anti-Malware Engineering Team, as of 2PM on Tuesday, PDT, 18 September 2007, "the Renos family of malware has been removed from 668,362 distinct machines. The Zlob family has been removed from 664,258 machines. And the Nuwar family has been removed from 274,372 machines. In total, malware has been removed by this month’s MSRT from 2,574,586 machines." It has also been reported that another anti-malware researcher who has been tracking these recent attacks presented data that shows that the team knocked out approximately one-fifth of "Storm's" Denial of Service (DoS) capability on 11 September. No continued decrease was evident though since the first day which was presumably due to a newer version of the software that the criminals behind the deployment of the "Storm" botnet has apparently immediately released.

Read the full article here.

Eric Bangeman of Ars Technica reports on the growing power of PSP on the internet today. According to a new survey from ipoque, a German traffic management and analysis firm, P2P traffic is dominating the Internet these days with ipoque's "preliminary results" showing that P2P applications account from anywhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of all Internet traffic. The final survey results are not yet available and will presented at the Emerging Technology Conference at MIT later this month.

During the last year, BitTorrent accounted for between 50 percent to 75 percent of all P2P traffic, with eDonkey coming in second at between 5 percent and 50 percent. ipoque's data appears at odds with that of Ellacoya Networks, a company that makes deep packet inspection gear. The company said in June that P2P traffic accounts for just 37 percent of North American traffic, compared with 46 percent for HTTP traffic. Of that 46 percent, over a third consisted of streaming video, à la YouTube.

Despite the differences in how the traffic is broken out, ipoque and Ellacoya's data both illustrate much of the P2P traffic reported by both firms is video. With the surge in traffic of YouTube and other video sites, as well as the official upcoming launch of Joost, demand for high-bandwidth applications like video is definitely increasing. This has resulted to ISPs' interest in deep packet inspection and other traffic-shaping tools.

Read full article here.

Sophos recently released its global statistics naming the top 12 spam-relaying countries for the period between April to June 2007. The US and China tops the list, while Europe, on the other hand, houses six of the top 12 countries mentioned in the statistics, which when combined, account for even more spam-relaying than the U.S. The statistics reveal as well that the overall global volume of spam rose by 9% during the second quarter, when compared to the same period in 2006.

"'While the US remains top spam dog, the latest chart emphasises the urgent need for joined-up global action to combat this growing problem,' said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. 'For every spam campaign, the spammers, the compromised computers used, and the people being deluged by the unsolicited mail are often located in totally different parts of the world. A consolidated effort is needed not only to pursue and prosecute spammers, but also to convince computer users everywhere of the importance of blocking rather than responding to spam messages. Everyone has a part to play if we are to win the global battle against spam.'"

Statistics on spam relayed by continent, however, show Asia as the top spam-relaying continent with the number of Asian nations relaying smaller amounts of spam. Europe, which topped the chart in the first quarter of 2007, has reduced its percentage by 6.6 percent and fallen to second place. Asia, North America, South America and Africa have all seen rises in spam-relaying activity.

Read the full article here.

OECD recently released their Communications Outlook Report, a discussion and an analysis of market structures and recent policy developments. Among the topics discussed was the chapter on main trends in pricing in telecommunication services. It has been noted that with the dramatic increase in Broadband speeds, subscription costs have either remained constant or have been reduced. Based on monthly subscriptions, Sweden has the cheapest broadband plan with $10.47 a month, and US ranks fourth with $15.93 a month. With regard to the newest broadband technology: Fiber, Japan NTT residential connection (100 Mbps down/up) costs $49 a month, and in the US, Verizon FiOS (30 megabits down/5 megabits up) costs $191.20.

More on the OECD Communications Outlook Report here.

Related article may also be accessed at GigaOM.

Kaspersky Lab, a developer of secure content management solutions, recently announced its annual report on malware and spam evolution. The report, authored by Kaspersky Lab analysts, surveys the trends of 2006 and looks at what 2007 may bring.

Malware Evolution: 2006. The report provides an overview of the most important incidents in the malware world, highlights the main trends, and examines how the situation will evolve. Particular stress is laid on the continuing increase in the number of Trojan programs, particularly those designed to steal online gaming account data; the first viruses and worms for MacOS; and Trojans for J2ME, which are designed to steal funds from mobile user accounts. The number of new malicious programs was up 41% on 2005. As for the future evolution of malicious programs, Kaspersky Lab virus analysts believe that virus writers and spammers will work ever more closely together; the number of Trojans will continue to increase; and that virus writers will be on the lookout for exploitable vulnerabilities in Vista.

Spam Evolution: 2006. Data provided by the Kaspersky Spam Lab shows that in 2006, between 70% and 80% of mail traffic on the Russian Internet was spam. The majority of spam sent to Russian users originates in Russia, the U.S.A. and China. Spammers actively used graphics in order to evade spam filters. They are also continued to send spam masquerading as personal correspondence in order to get the recipient to read the whole message and then act as the spammers intended, whether by calling a designated number or clicking on a link. The report on spam evolution also highlights how mass mailings differ from each other according to language: most Russian language spam offers education and training, and a wide range of goods ranging from busts of the Russian president to a device which will 'translate' a dog's bark. English language spam, on the other hand, tends to focus on advertising for stocks and shares, viagra and cheap software. The report also notes that spam became increasingly criminalized in 2006, with spammers actively using SMS to spread spam.

The company's analysts believe that technologies currently in use will continue to evolve in 2007, together with further development of graphical spam, and increased criminalization of mass mailings.

Read the executive summaries here: Malware Evolution: 2006 and Spam Evolution: 2006.
The full annual report can be found here.  

This news item was accessed through Russia Newswire.

The eighth edition of the ITU Internet Reports, entitled "digital.life" was prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World 2006 (December 4-8 2006, Hong Kong)and is available now online. The report examines how innovation in digital technology is radically changing individual and societal lifestyles.

Chapter one: going digital outlines the meanings of "digital" and reflects on the many ways of being digital. Around one in every three people on the planet now carries a digital mobile phone around with them wherever they go. Globally, more hours are spent consuming digital media, such as the internet, than any analogue media, including television and radio. Digital technologies are transforming businesses and governments, and changing the ways we live and interact. We are witnessing what has been termed a “digital revolution”, which had its beginnings in the early 1980s and refers to the replacement of analogue devices and services with their digital successors. This technological shift has brought about considerable change in the human condition itself, especially in its socioeconomic and cultural aspects.

The transition from narrowband to broadband digital networks (figure below) is now well-advanced in the fixed-line world where there were some 216 million broadband subscribers across the world at the end of 2005, amounting to just over half the total number of internet subscribers and around one-fifth of total fixed lines.

As the world becomes increasingly digital, new challenges and important dilemmas arise for businesses and policy-makers. Private individuals, too, are faced with a bewildering number of choices for their information and communications needs.

If you are eager to discover more about these challenges as well as about the importance of being digital and digital ubiquity, you can download chapter one: going digital.

The full text of the report is available online at the digital.life website.  For more information about the report, contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is a composite index that has been developed by the ITU/Digital Opportunity Platform to measure countries' progress in ICTs and digital opportunity, as part of the endorsed methodology for WSIS evaluation and follow-up. It is a flexible methodology that has been used in many different ways. Every day this week, SPU will demonstrate a different application of the DOI, to show its flexible and versatile applications for policy analysis.

The urban/rural digital divide is one of the most obvious divisions in many countries (depending on their geography, degree of urbanisation and industrial development, among other factors). ITU has traditionally sought to monitor the urban/rural divide in telecoms using the indicators of % of main lines in urban areas and mainlines in the largest city. For example, in China, as recently as 2004, just over two-thirds of all mainlines were to be found in urban areas (World Telecommunication Indicators).

However, the urban/rural divide extends far beyond connectivity. Differences in digital opportunity between urban and rural areas are also evident in the price of access to ICTs (often more expensive in rural areas), speed and quality of access (what the Nigerian blogger Oro calls "plug and pray") and technology in e.g., coverage of population with a mobile signal. The Digital Opportunity Index measures all these different aspects to access to ICTs.

For most countries, detailed data on urban/rural differences for all these aspects are difficult to come by. However, at the recent Digital Opportunity Forum held in Korea, the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technologypresented its expert analysis of the urban/rural divide in Egypt (see figure below). Taking into account differences in price, coverage, Internet availability and usage, the Ministry calculated that the rural population in Egypt has one quarter less opportunity to access and use ICTs as in urban areas. This points to a measurable and significant urban/rural divide in connectivity in a country where the vast majority of the population (95%) live in the fertile Nile valley. The DOI provides a means not only of quantifying the extent of this urban/rural divide, but also of monitoring its future evolution.

The urban/rural divide in Egypt

Source: EgyptianMinistry of Communications and Information Technology, presented to the Digital Opportunity Forum, 1 September 2006.

For more information about the Digital Opportunity Index, click here.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

Europe is the most advanced region with a DOI score of 0.55, considerably higher than the world average (0.37), followed by the Americas (0.4). DOI scores show that basic telecom access and affordability are the main areas of achievement for most countries.

European countries, which are mostly developed economies, provide good digital opportunity for most of their inhabitants, with extensive infrastructure, generally low prices and widespread use of new technologies. Poorer European countries generally have medium DOI scores (e.g. Albania, Belarus, Turkey and Ukraine). Poland and Russia are among the top 15 gainers in the DOI worldwide over the period 2000-2005, making significant progress in ICT infrastructure.

The economies from the region are also leveraging their investments in infrastructure well in order to widely introduce new technologies and yield more advanced forms of usage. One interesting aspect of mobile Internet usage is the wide variation in access among countries of similar economic or geographic circumstances. Almost a third of Slovenian households and one fifth of Finnish households use mobile phones to access the Internet, while in other countries, less than five per pent of households use mobile phones to access the Internet.

Despite the favourable global picture, disparities in connectivity within the region persist and many are concerned about the European digital divide, which is likely to result from the sometimes modest convergence between the economies.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

The map illustrates the strong lead taken by Asia, together with Europe and North America, in realizing digital opportunity. Two Asian countries top the world rankings – the Republic of Korea and Japan, and the average DOI scores for the region are higher than the world average of 0.37. Central Asian countries are catching up fast with large infrastructural investments and strong gains in mobile and internet subscribers, including 3G mobile technologies (CDMA 2000 1x and W-CDMA). It is worth noting that five out of the top 15 gainers in the DOI come from the Asian region: these are India, China, Indonesia, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

The Asian Tigers, together with Scandinavian countries lead in internet subscriptions, with around a third of their population subscribing to the internet, but only half of these subscribed to broadband services. This is in contrast to the Republic of Korea, where virtually all internet users are broadband subscribers, with access to faster, advanced services such as video, teleconferencing, multiplayer gaming and triple play. These different profiles of internet usage could result in the development of more varied skill sets and contrasting rates of innovation and, over the longer term, may shape the Information Society differently, according to the type, speed and capacity of internet access available. However, there are often large differences in the level of development within the region - the Asia-Pacific region contains both high-income and Least Developed Countries. In many economies fixed line telephony has been challenged by the worldwide growth in mobile phones.

However, there remains a strong need for basic connectivity in Asia, where connectivity is the main factor driving the digital divide and limiting access to ICTs.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

The Americas are the second most advanced region in terms of ICT development, following Europe. DOI scores show that basic telecom access and affordability are the main areas of achievement for most countries. In low income Latin American countries, digital opportunity mostly derives from access to cellular service and affordable telecoms. Meanwhile, high-income North-American countries are successfully realizing digital opportunity through high-performance infrastructure (e.g., broadband) and the use of advanced technologies.

In North America, the economies provide good digital opportunity for most of their inhabitants, with extensive infrastructure, generally low prices and widespread use of new technologies. From the Latin American countries, Chile is the highest-ranking Latin American country at 40th place in the DOI for 2005, followed by Argentina at 51st place.

Four of the Top 15 gainers in the DOI over the period 2001-2005 are from Latin America – Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Peru – the latter two are also among the very rare cases where Utilization exceeds Infrastructure. The strong gains in Utilization in Chile and Venezuela resulted from early policies for privatization and a vibrant private sector has successfully promoted telecommunications and the higher-margin broadband segment in these countries.

Caribbean states also generally do well in the DOI. This may be due to an ‘island effect’, where small islands may specialize in ICT intensive offshore industries reliant on telecommunications. Barbados, Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda all have high DOI scores.

The DOI registers a steady expansion in the number of mobile Internet subscribers, reflected in the steady increase in Utilization over time. Most notably, the DOI shows that mobile Internet and 3G services are no longer the preserve of high-income countries and are now offered in many developing countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in central and eastern Asia. The 2005 Mobinet study on global mobile usage reports an upward trend in the percentage of multimedia phone users in Latin America browsing the internet or using mobile e-mail at least once a month on their phones, which jumped from 32 per cent in 2004 to 64 per cent in 2005.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

The DOI scores for 2005 are sharply differentiated according to region. Africa, the region with some of the poorest countries in the world, is greatly impacted by the digital divide. Europe, the Americas and Asia all have average DOI scores higher than the world average of 0.37, while Africa has an average DOI score of 0.20, mainly due to limited Utilization and fixed line infrastructure. When compared to other regions, Africa ranks last with an average regional DOI score of barely one-third that of Europe (0.55). The African strong-performers are Mauritius, the Seychelles and North African countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt).

The DOI map of Africa here below shows a pattern of high scores among the North African economies (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia) - Egypt is also the only African country in the Top 15 gainers in the DOI, having realized a gain of 32 per cent in digital opportunity over the period 2000-2005. By contrast, low-ranking economies are mostly inland, in the Sub-Saharan region, and also include economies such as Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Niger and Sierra Leone.

Nevertheless, despite the overall situation, many African countries are making progress in reducing their internal gaps. As a region, Africa has the highest growth rate in mobile cellular subscribers of any region, with a 66 per cent growth rate in 2005, with Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa accounting for 60 per cent of the new mobile subscribers added in the region. In 2005, Nigeria alone added 9.7 million subscribers, which represents about 7 per cent of its total population. Mobile phones provide more than three-quarters of all the phone connections in 19 countries in Africa. As Africa shows, the tendency of developing countries to promote mobile coverage and utilization over fixed services makes the DOI’s mobile components particularly useful for monitoring advances in regional markets.

From a telecommunication policy perspective, high-ranking countries illustrate the influence of liberalization and competition in promoting opportunity and infrastructure deployment. Most of the North African countries, as well as Senegal and South Africa, have opened their fixed and mobile markets to competition and are rapidly increasing high-speed network deployment. Competition is helping to reduce tariffs and introduce service packages that respond better to the needs of the population. In Algeria, for instance, the entry of a third wireless cellular provider triggered new strategies for prepaid services that had not previously been offered by the incumbents.

For more analysis on these and other issues related to measuring digital opportunity, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

As part of the ITU's work in follow-up to the WSIS, the World Information Society Report 2006 is addressed to all stakeholders and intended to provide insights as well as useful benchmarks for building the Information Society. The Report gives practical examples of how the DOI can be used, and highlights projects around the world that are working to meet the commitments made at the WSIS.

Chapter five, Beyond WSIS: Making a difference globally, focuses on WSIS implementation and follow-up in different countries. The WSIS called for governments to move from principles into action. There are many efforts underway, both large and small, to implement the WSIS goals, involving a range of stakeholders at the community level, regionally, nationally and internationally. This chapter of the report highlights some of these initiatives to implement the WSIS Plan of Action, from national strategies to grassroots projects. A variety of initiatives have been launched to promote digital opportunity, infrastructure and advanced ICT applications and these highlight fresh approaches and innovative new solutions to ICT development.

One of the biggest challenges for the uptake of ICTs and for building a people-centered and development-oriented Information Society is the affordability of the services. The Digital Opportunity Index monitors the mobile communications that promise to bridge the digital divide in many parts of the world, as well as more recent technologies such as broadband and mobile Internet access. The price of broadband continues to fall worldwide, by as much as twenty per cent a year over the last two years according to ITU’s analysis, while broadband speeds continue to increase. The lower cost of ICTs greately facilitates their diffusion and utilization, and contributes to increased digital opportunity.

Internet affordability (cost of 20h internet connection as a % of monthly GDP per capita)

Note: 1 means affordable; 0 means that the price of lower-user basket is in excess of average GNI per capita.

These positive trends are not restricted to developed countries, and many valuable multi-stakeholder initiatives are underway to further promote ICT development worldwide in the wake of WSIS. 

The DOI has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, the Digital Opportunity Platform, comprising ITU, UNCTAD and KADO (the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion) and which is open to new partners. It will be reported annually in order to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets, and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society, by 2015.