Archived Newsroom • Press Release |
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UN Broadband Commission to government leaders:
broadband can be your
most powerful development catalyst
High-speed networks and services essential to meet
UN Sustainable Development Goals
Dubai, 14 March 2016
– The
Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development’s 13th
full meeting, held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, yesterday, reached
consensus on the need for a new set of connectivity targets to help
governments more effectively harness broadband networks and services to
drive progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Commissioners agreed that broadband networks, services and applications have
enormous potential to deliver dramatic results in education, health and
socio-economic growth.
A recent informal meeting of Commissioners at the World Economic
Forum in Davos
emphasized that connecting the unconnected and generating sufficient
investment opportunities for the universal deployment of broadband networks,
services and applications will be a key factor in achieving all 17 global
goals.
Debate in Dubai around potential new targets focused on the importance of
adding targets to measure the utilization of selected broadband-enabled
public services, the choice of statistical indicators to accurately gauge
broadband access at the country and community levels, as well as the choice
of data sources and methodologies for generating accurate, reliable
measurement. The Commission also agreed on the importance of developing
National Digital Scorecards to measure national progress towards achieving
broadband targets.
The Commission’s
60+ leaders and experts from government, UN agencies,
civil society and a broad spectrum of business sectors will now work to
formulate concrete, measurable broadband connectivity goals that could be
agreed by the next full meeting of the Commission in New York in September.
“Agreement on new targets in September would serve as the next stepping
stone to the Commission’s vision of ‘broadband for all’, said ITU
Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, who serves as co-Vice Chair of the Commission
alongside UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. “Broadband represents a
powerful way to accelerate progress towards the attainment of the 17 SDGs,
and new broadband networks and services will play a key role in the delivery
of education, healthcare and basic social services, particularly for
chronically disadvantaged communities.”
ITU already tracks broadband deployment in the Commission’s annual
State of Broadband report, which includes rankings of
nations worldwide in terms of broadband policy, affordability and uptake.
“The world is going through a staggering confluence of emerging
technological breakthroughs that can open vast new horizons for growth and
development,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. “There remain 1.3
billion people without electricity today, and over four billion people
without access to the Internet. Access and connectivity are absolutely
crucial for societies across the world. This is why the message of the
Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development is so important.”
The
latest edition of the Commission’s State of
Broadband report, released last
September, showed that broadband Internet is failing to reach those who
could benefit most, with 57% of the world’s people still offline and unable
to take advantage of the enormous economic and social benefits the Internet
can offer.
Established in 2010, as a top-level advocacy body promoting broadband as an
accelerator of global development, the Broadband Commission is chaired by
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helú.
The Commission recently welcomed ten new high-level members:
- Abdulaziz Salem Al Ruwais,
Governor, Communication and Information Technology Commission, Saudi
Arabia
- Jean-Yves Charlier, CEO, VimpelCom
- Scott Gegenheimer, CEO, Zain Group
- Mats Granryd, Director-General, GSMA
- Ramin Guluzade, Minister of Communication and High
Technologies, Azerbaijan
- Baroness Beeban Kidron, award-winning filmmaker
and 5Rights Campaign champion
- Philipp Metzger, Director-General, Swiss
Federal Communications Office
- Catherine Novelli, US Under-Secretary for
Economic Growth, Energy & Environment
- Rupert Pearce, CEO, Inmarsat
- Rajeev Suri, CEO, Nokia
The new members bring the total number of Commissioners to 62, including the
four principals.
This latest meeting of the Commission was held at the invitation of UNESCO
Goodwill Ambassador and Broadband Commissioner
Sunny Varkey, and was held alongside the Varkey
Foundation’s Global
Education and Skills Forum. The gathering welcomed a number of
special guests, including leading international journalist and commentator
Fareed Zakaria.
The meeting also complemented a joint ITU/UNESCO Policy Forum held during
UNESCO Mobile Learning Week, which brought together
governments ministers of ICT and education to examine ways the role that
policies and cross-sectoral collaboration can play in fostering innovation
and the use of mobile technology to improve the quality, equity and
accessibility of education.
Photos of the 13th full meeting of the Commission can be downloaded
from Flickr at:
http://bit.ly/1QHhw7r.
Read the
2015 edition of the Broadband Commission State of Broadband
report
, along with report Highlights and video interviews. The report includes the
latest country-by-country rankings based on broadband access and
affordability for over 160 economies.
Watch the Commission’s video on how ICTs can power SDGs:
www.itu.int/en/sustainable-world.
View the
full list of Broadband Commissioners.
Follow the conversation on Twitter: #broadband #ICT4SDG #ICT4D
For more on the Broadband Commission, visit:
www.broadbandcommission.org
Follow the Broadband Commission on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/broadbandcommission
Follow the Broadband Commission on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/UNBBCom
For more information, please contact:
For ITU
Sarah Parkes
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information, ITU
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For UNESCO
George Papagiannis
Acting Head, Media Relations
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About ITU...
About UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization works
to harness the power of knowledge and information, particularly through
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), to transform economies,
create inclusive knowledge societies, and empower local communities by
increasing access to and preservation and sharing of information and
knowledge in all of UNESCO’s domains. For UNESCO, such knowledge societies
must be built on four pillars: freedom of expression; universal access to
information and knowledge; respect for cultural and linguistic diversity;
and quality education for all. See more at:
www.unesco.org