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As the UN specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs), ITU plays a critical role in fostering equitable access to the modern technologies that can transform people’s lives and help break the vicious cycle of poverty and isolation.

ITU’s development goals – set by the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in 2005 and the World Telecommunication Development Conference in Hyderabad in 2010, prioritize equitable access, not just across countries, but within communities, with special focus on gender issues, youth access, the disabled, indigenous communities and very remote populations. There is also a special direct aid programme targeting the 49 UN-designated Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

The Digital Divide

In 1985, ITU commissioned ‘The Missing Link’, a report which drew international attention to the shocking imbalance in access between developed and developing countries. The report was the first to underline the direct correlation between ICT infrastructure and economic growth, and to attempt to quantify what became known as the ‘digital divide’. It set the goal that nearly all humankind should be within two hours’ walk of a telephone by the year 2000.

More than ten years on from what once seemed an ambitious goal, the world is a very different place. Mobile technology has taken markets by storm, bringing ready access to voice and data services to the populations of countries which, back in 1985, had fewer than one phone line for every 500 people.

The number of mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide is now well over five billion, and more than two billion people have access to the Internet. In terms of ICT access it’s been a miraculous new millennium for most of the world’s poorest nations, and especially for the LDCs, with the total number of mobile cellular subscriptions in the LDCs as a whole rising more than 150-fold since the year 2000 – from under 2 million to 280 million by the end of 2010.

Still, many problems remain. Buoyant regional growth averages hide wide disparities. So while some LDCs are booming – at end 2010, Gambia and Mauritania, for example, boasted mobile penetrations of 80% or over, far higher than the European average of 50% in the year 2000 – Eritrea still has an effective teledensity of less than 4%. In the Pacific, Samoa has a mobile penetration of 91%; Kiribati, its near neighbour, has 10%. And Myanmar, in contrast to many markets in Asia, has just 12 mobile subscriptions per 1,000 people.

Such figures make for a stark contrast with the industrialized world, where Europe now has many more mobile subscriptions than inhabitants, and where, globally, 100 countries now boast mobile cellular penetration of over 100%. But phone service is just one part of the puzzle in a globalized economy that increasingly relies on online information exchange. At the turn of the millennium, the 49 LDCs shared just 178,000 Internet subscribers. While that number is rising, penetration remains low, at just 4.6% in 2010.

Turning to broadband, penetration parts of the developing world remains largely confined to foreign-owned businesses and the tourism sector. In 32 of the world’s developing nations, the cost of a monthly broadband subscription is over 50% of per capita monthly gross national income – compared with under 5% of per capita GNI in the top 46 countries in the ITU’s ICT Price Basket.

The Digital Divide and the MDGs

When they approved the Millennium Declaration in 2000, world leaders reiterated their belief that ICTs would be instrumental to meeting all eight MDGs. Improved access to ICTs can improve farming practices and assist micro-entrepreneurs; help disseminate the information and health services that can prevent AIDS and other communicable diseases; promote equality by empowering women to take economic control of their lives; and foster environmental protection through climate monitoring and early response. Indeed, one MDG target explicitly promotes increased availability of the many benefits of ICTs throughout the developing world.

"ITU continues to monitor the development of the digital divide and is undertaking many projects to bring high-speed broadband Internet access to rural and underserved areas."
Dr Hamadoun Touré, ITU Secretary-General

As the world approaches the 2015 MDG deadline, ICTs are indeed playing an increasingly important part in driving progress towards these critical goals. ICT-based applications and services – such as electronic commerce, distance learning, telemedicine and e-government – are improving the quality of life for countless people around the world.

• ICTs are helping eradicate extreme poverty and hunger through village phone projects, where poor women are given assistance in buying mobile telephones, and can then sell phone services on to fellow villagers. At the same time, by connecting low-income artisans to global markets, online cooperatives give poor craftspeople direct access to consumers, rather than obliging them to sell to middlemen, who take most of the profits. And by providing direct, relevant meteorological and agricultural information online, and in local languages, ICTs can also help farmers vastly improve the productivity of their land.

• ICTs are helping achieve universal primary education and gender equality. The world’s largest universities are now distance learning institutions. Many developing countries are now using ICTs to reach isolated students who are not able to attend classes in person. In Rwanda, for example, distance learning is being widely used to train teachers and deliver information, education and critical life-skills via solar-powered radios. It’s also helping break the cycle of women’s poverty by teaching girls and women to read, learn maths, and develop basic ICT skills.

• ICTs are helping combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Since its launch in 2004, the Global Media AIDS Initiative has grown to include more than 300 media companies worldwide, united in the fight against HIV/AIDS. To fight the scourge of malaria, satellite monitoring is now helping identify, target and control mosquito breeding areas. And telemedicine is making possible great advances in the fight against tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, as well as many chronic conditions such as diabetes.

• ICTs are helping ensure environmental sustainability. Initiatives such as using radio programmes to promote better farming practices; using satellites to monitor rain forests, glaciers and the polar regions; and reducing the energy requirements of new technology are all contributing to creating a more environmentally sound way of life.

ITU’s Role

When it comes to improving access and accessibility to ICTs, there is no simple panacea. Instead, ITU adopts a multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder approach that targets key areas ranging from technology and ICT regulation to public-private partnership initiatives and grass-roots capacity building.

Through its work on spectrum planning, knowledge sharing and regulatory reform, ITU is playing an active role in promoting new technologies well-suited to developing world conditions, such as high-speed cellular mobile, VSAT and long distance wireless platforms.

Through its comprehensive portfolio of regulatory activities, including its annual Global Symposium for Regulators, its global Telecommunication Regulatory Survey, its ICT Regulation Toolkit and its G-Rex clearing-house service, managed in partnership with the World Bank, which provides instant access to regulatory decisions in markets worldwide, ITU is fostering the regulatory best practice that will help stimulate ICT uptake.

Capacity building is another vital area where ITU plays a highly proactive role, helping build awareness at the user level while at the same time focusing on the training of ICT professionals who will serve as a pool of skilled personnel to support network roll-outs, maintenance and management in developing nations.

ITU’s Internet Training Centre (ITC) initiative, has already seen the establishment of 79 ITCs in 65 nations, 24 of which are LDCs. Together, these Centres have already trained over 33,000 graduates (including 8,800 women), with a further 9,000 students (2,400 of whom are female) currently enrolled. The programme has also trained 241 instructors globally, 35 of whom are women.

The curricula offered include computer basics and IP networking courses in partnership with Cisco, office software applications in partnership with Microsoft, open source applications (Apache, MySQL, PHP) in partnership with the European Commission, community business using wireless networking in partnership with Inveneo, and, most recently, Linux courseware and certification in partnership with the Linux Professional Institute.

Complementing this, ITU has also contributed US$9 million in seed funding to help set up ICT Centres of Excellence in regions around the world. Designed to offer continuous education to senior ICT managers in the public and private sectors through distance learning programmes, these Centres serve as regional focal points for professional development, research, and knowledge sharing, as well as providing revenue-generating specialist consultancy services to external clients.

In addition, ITU is actively partnering with leading ICT manufacturers and service providers to fund YES, the ICT Youth Education Scheme. Launched in 2003, the programme has awarded more than 50 scholarships to gifted tertiary students in developing countries to enable them to pursue ICT-related studies. International YES partners include Alcatel-Lucent, the Portuguese ICT regulator Anacom, Nokia Communications, Egypt’s NTI, Thales Communications, and Vodafone.

As the agency ‘Committed to Connecting the World’, ITU believes in the fundamental human right to communicate – and in the power of ICTs to serve as catalysts in helping reach the Millennium Development Goals.

To further harness the power of public-private partnership, ITU launched Connect the World, an innovative development initiative founded on building multi-stakeholder synergies between private companies, governments and development agencies. Recent initiatives under this umbrella include Connect a School, Connect a Community, which targets school ICT installations as hubs for community-wide connectivity, and the Wireless Broadband Partnership, which seeks to mobilize key stakeholders to finance, plan, build, operate and maintain wireless broadband infrastructure within beneficiary countries, with particular attention to underserved populations in rural and remote areas.

To build momentum, ITU also initiated a series of ITU Connect events, the first of which welcomed over 1,000 top-level delegates and raised an unprecedented US$ 55 billion in investment commitments targeting intra-regional connectivity. Held in Kigali, Rwanda in 2007, ITU Connect Africa saw commitments to interconnect all African capitals and major cities with ICT broadband infrastructure and strengthen connectivity to the rest of the world by 2012, and to extend broadband and ICT services to all African villages by 2015.

ITU is now extending this highly successful event to other world regions, with ITU Connect CIS, which was held in Minsk, Belarus on 26-27 November 2009, and ITU Connect Arab States and ITU Connect Americas, both planned to take place in 2012.