ITU is publishing a major new Report on the impact of the financial crisis on the ICT industry, "Confronting the Crisis: Its Impact on the ICT Industry", on Monday 16 February 2009, when the ITU Secretary-General Dr. Toure is due to speak at GSMA Barcelona on this subject.

The Report covers the major impact of the financial crisis on investment & financing, consumer demand, regulation and changing telco strategies in response to the crisis. It also examines the impact of the crisis on different technologies, including mobile telephony, WiMAX and Long Term Evolution (LTE), broadband Internet and NGN and the satellite industry.

The Report features invited insights from leading experts from the World Bank, OECD and UNCTAD, as well as industry analysts including Informa, Analysys Mason, Deloitte & Touche TMT Predictions, Point Topic and Maravedis. The leading trade associations, the GSMA and the WiMAX Forum, also contributed insights on the outlook for the mobile and WiMAX industry respectively.  On 16 February 2009, ITU will launch a website to coincide with Dr. Toure's speech featuring all these invited contributions and more, including perspectives on the regional impact from Balancing Act Africa and the Arab Advisors Group.

This Report will be available soon - for further information, please contact pressinfo@itu.int.

The CEO of Celtel Kenya, Mr David Murray, is quoted by the East African Standard as suggesting that there may be a natural limit to the size of the mobile market in Kenya. Mobile communications have been the fastest-growing market segment of telecommunications around the world, not just in Africa,but Mr. Murray warns that, despite the growth, the country’s economy may not be able to support more than three operators. Mr. Murray is quoted as saying that "the economic reality is that if you look around the world, countries bigger and wealthier than Kenya cannot support four operators."

The Kenyan mobile market is divided between Celtel Kenya and Safaricom, Econet Wireless and France Telecoms, who have just acquired the controlling stake in Telkom Kenya and is expected to rollout mobile phone operations in the country. With a population of 34 million, mobile Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is less than $10 per month.

Murray reckons that survival will be determined by creativity on the marketing front, product development and network reliability. One example is Celtel International's One Network service, the first-ever borderless mobile network in the world without roaming call surcharges or payment to receive incoming calls. The One Network service has recently been extended to cover twelve countries, equivalent to an area more than twice the size of the European Union.

To read the full article, please see here.

WiMAX Counts.Com reports that WiMAX has expanded rapidly in Africa over 2006-2007. At the beginning of 2006, the WiMAX subscribers in Africa numbered just a few thousand. But by the end of 2007, Africa accounts for more than 20,000 WiMAX subscribers. Users are mostly business customers, who have access to 10’s or 100’s of internal users, in contrast to residential access. Over this year, the subscriber numbers have grown at an average rate of 28% per quarter, and the growth from Q2 to Q3 2007 alone was 36%.

There were several new deployments that took place during the second half of 2007. There are now around 15 commercial deployments of BWA/WiMAX in the region, with around half of them started this year. A further 10 operators are trailing or evaluating the implementation of a WiMAX network.

The lack of traditional fixed line telecom infrastructure in the region opens up big opportunities for WiMAX to provide broadband Internet to the many rural and underserved areas that cannot be addressed with wired technologies. African operators are poised to spread the benefits of WiMAX. There is also a low penetration of broadband subscribers. Out of the 922 million inhabitants of Africa at the end of 2006, only 43.6 million were Internet users, and only 1 million had a broadband connection.

For the full article, please see here.

Mobile phone service provider Celtel has expanded its roaming service offer to 12 African countries, enabling around half of all African mobile phone subscribers to communicate across national borders, without incurring extra costs.

Celtel's roaming service is now available in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Malawi, as well as the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Launched a little over a year ago, Celtel's roaming service will extend services to a population of nearly 400 million people, living in an area twice as large as western Europe. "This is a feat that not even European firms have achieved," said Anna Othoro, the marketing director at Celtel. Although Celtel is yet to announce an upgrade to 3G services like its competitor Safaricom, market-watchers believe Celtel's strategy could be a high-volume strategy targeting larger numbers of users to use more accessible services.

For more information, please see the article in the Business Daily.

The Japanese Ministry of Information and Communication has recently published a report on Network Neutrality, which notes that simply increasing the number of Internet exchanges may not be enough to address Internet traffic flow problems.

In Japan, Internet exchange (IX) points  for ISP peering are concentrated in Tokyo and Osaka areas, with only a few IXs in local regions. In most cases, the local ISP routes its traffic through an IX located in Tokyo or Osaka. However, lines have a high cost burden (even when they are shared among multiple ISPs) and supply on backbone infrastructure is extremely tight.

In order to improve information traffic flow, increasing the number of local IXs in itself would not solve the network traffic problems: "In addition, it is necessary to respond to increases in cost burden and insufficient capacity on the relay backbone. One important measure is to equip local IXs with cache servers for information aggregation. Fetching information from a local cache would ease network pressure and improve the Internet usage environment for all local users. Therefore, from the viewpoint of cache aggregation on local servers, it is appropriate for administrative authorities to support cooperation between related operators and to take necessary measures (for example, by considering how the system should deal with issues such as copyright protection)" (page 29).

For more information, please see here.

According to its third quarter 2007 results, MTN Group serves 54.1 million people in 21 countries, making it the largest operator in Africa and the Middle East, with over 64,000 new customers a day. September figures show that the number of MTN's subscribers jumped 12% since June.

MTN's South African network is the cornerstone of its activities, with subscribers rising 3% to 14 million. Nigeria is MTN's other cash cow, with 14.9 million customers each spending an average of $17 a month. That represents a 7% increase in customers, as well as a healthy 4% rise in their spending. MTN is investing heavily in improving infrastructure in Nigeria to cope with the growing demand.

MTN's Middle East and North Africa region saw 36% growth in customers, with its new Iranian network winning 1.7 million more users. Irancell serves 3.7 million people, each spending an average of $11 a month.

For further information, see Issue 378 of Balancing Act Africa here and the Session One background paper prepared for the Connect Africa Summit.

Nigeria is celebrating the six year anniversary of the launch of GSM services in the country, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission. Through the award of five mobile licenses, the NCC facilitated a phenomenal expansion of telephone lines in Nigeria from just 450,000 operational lines in May 1999 to over 38 million lines by July 2007, boosting teledensity growth from 0.4 per 100 inhabitants to 24 per 100 inhabitants. The capacity for growth in the number of phone lines in the country over the next decade remains quite high, as some parts of the country are yet to be covered.

In January 2001, three licenses were awarded to ECONET Wireless now (CELTEL), MTN and MTEL, a subsidiary of the incumbent operator. Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) was also awarded an operating license as a National Carrier. In 2002, a fourth Digital Mobile License was issued to Globacom (Glomobile). A fifth Mobile License (with GSM spectrum) was awarded to Emerging Market Telecommunications Services Limited earlier this year. Blossoming competition in the mobile market has led to reductions in the price of mobile subscriptions and services and resulted in nearly a quarter of all Nigerians becoming mobile subscribers.

To celebrate the six year anniversary, the Nigerian Communications Commission has issued a press release covering all major aspects of the telecom market - investment, revenues, tariffs, consumer protection, universal service provision and licenses, as well as the Digital Bridges Institute and other programmes. For more information, please see here.

China's two mobile operators have released interim results for the first half of 2007. China Mobile, which accounted for over three-quarters or 301.2 million of China's  total 461 million mobile subscribers at year end 2006, noted a stunning 21.6 per cent increase in turnover over the first half of 2006. It is reporting net monthly additions in excess of five million new subscribers a month, with half of all these new subscribers coming from rural areas. By June 2007, total subscribers amounted to 332 million. Value-added services now account for 25.5%or over a quarter of all mobile revenues  in mid-2007, up from 23.5% for all of 2006. For more information, please see here.

China Unicom, based in Hong Kong, reported a more modest five per cent increase in revenues. As at 30 June 2007, China Unicom had a total of 151.632 million cellular subscribers, a net increase of 9.266 million cellular subscribers in the first half of the year. Value-added services now account for 21% of all mobile revenues, up from 19.5% for 2006. For more information, please see here.

Overall, the picture of booming growth in China's massive market for telecom services continues. India pipped China to the post for overall net gains in mobile subscribers last year, but if current growth rates continue, growth in China might outstrip India in absolute terms soon.

The UK regulator for communications, OFCOM, has today published its fourth annual report on The Communications Market 2007. The report reviews convergence in the market for communications in the UK, as well as trends in the television, radio and telecom sectors. The report is packed with useful analysis, description of trends and discussion of their implications for the future of the telecom industry.

For more information, please see here.

An excellent study, packed with data and statistics by Eria Hisali, a researcher at Makerere University, concludes that high taxes threaten to choke growth in Uganda's telecom markets. The study, recently published by the Uganda Communications Commission, finds that recent phenomenal growth in the Ugandan mobile market is slowing. Usage tax on pre-paid mobile services in Uganda is 30% (18% VAT and 12% excise duty), which the report claims is the second-highest level of service taxes on mobile use internationally. Telecoms accounted for nearly 4% of Uganda's total VAT revenues in 2000/01, and 6.5% of VAT revenues in 2005/06.

Although the latest statistics released by the Uganda Communications Commission show that the number of mobile subscribers continues to grow, the report finds that, intriguingly, minutes of use have reduced significantly in both mobile and fixed line use.  More people may be using mobiles, but they are using them less often and for shorter times.

Tax as a proportion of revenues for the telephone sub-sector rose from 5.7% in 2001 to 19.6 or nearly a fifth in 2005. The Report suggests that high taxes may result in a slowdown in growth of the telecommunication industry by reducing investment in the sector. It also suggests that uniform tax rates may mean that poorer households bear a higher burden than higher-income households. The Report concludes that, if market growth is to continue, there may be an "urgent need to rethink the current telecommunications sector tax policy".

the report follows growing interest in the impact of tax on take-up and usage of telecom services (for example, see the GSM Association's Mobile Tax Report 2006). To read the full report on Uganda, please see here.

The Pakistani financial newspaper, the Business Recorder, is reporting that the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) plans to launch an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service in October 2007.

Dr. Abdul Jabbar, Director-General of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) stated that "PTCL has won the first license to launch IPTV service which would be a landmark development in the country's telecom industry". Dr Jabbar added that other companies that meet the set criteria would also be issued such licenses, adding the Authority would monitor the IPTV service on the basis of the parameters being followed regarding electronic channels. The Business Recorder reports that the PTCL project is supported by the Chinese telecom equipment giant, Huawei (which will provide servers and set-top boxes) and Irdeto, a Netherlands-based content security company (which will provide content security solutions).

For more information, please see here.

The Ministry of Information and Communication of the Government of Kenya is considering introducing a cyber law including e-transactions that could serve as a model for other East African Community (EAC) countries - such as Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi (which have yet to enact such kind of legislation).

The Government of Kenya is interested in creating a dynamic environment for business outsourcing and call centers to compete with India, Philippines and China. Creating an enabling legal environment is a vital first step in this direction, with some funding from USAID towards the development of such legislation. The current Kenya Communication Amendment (KCA) Bill 2007 could be adapted to include e-transactions. By including e-Transactions in the converged Bill, the Ministry will also recognise the technological convergence occurring in the digital world.

For more information, please see the article in the East African Standard.

The High Court of Appeal of Botswana has ruled that the Botswana Telecommunications Authority (BTA) should no longer receive tax revenues from mobile phone operators from the sale of scratch cards and free airtime offered by the mobile operators to their customers. Botswana's two private cellular phone operators, Orange and Mascom, have paid 3 per cent of net turnover on a quarterly basis since 2002, when private mobile cellular phone services began in Botswana. However, Orange had appealed the payment of tax on freebies or free airtime the company occasionally extends to its customers, on the basis that this was free airtime, not an amount of money. The High Court of Appeal ruled that "Free airtime given by Orange to its customers is not an amount invoiced nor does it otherwise accrue to Orange for purposes of computation of net turnover".

The BTA may be liable for refunds and stands to lose a considerable amount of future revenue. For the full story, please see Mmegi Online.

Nigeria recently held its annual Finance and Information Technology Summit (FITS) on 26 July in Lagos, as an annual forum where ICT stakeholders and professionals from the banking and financial sector can interface. The theme for this year's seminar and exhibition was "seamless ICT integration in a Post-Consolidation Era".

The Director-General of the Nigeria IT Development Agency (NITDA), Professor Cleopas Angaye, made a presentation to the Summit where he stated that the success of e-payment solutions within Nigeria depends on the provision of adequate infrastructure, reliable helpdesk services and an enlightened population. He noted that, in the absence of trust, it will be difficult to convince potential buyers and sellers to migrate from the traditional platforms to more high-tech e-payment and e-commerce. Mr. Ekeigwe, President of Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA Lagos) argued that "IT governance" has not got the attention it deserves as IT needs more technical insight and has traditionally been viewed as separate from business processes.

For more information, please see here.

The Namibian Government is hosting a two-day event in Windhoek this Thursday and Friday, entitled 'ICTs for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development'. The conference is jointly organised by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Namibian Communications Commission (NCC) and the ICT Alliance, a body comprising key ICT industry players.

Following a convention on the new Information Communications Bill last week, the conference will allow for a full review of the ICT industry and the legislative environment for ICT in Namibia. The Namibian ICT industry has an annual turnover of about N$1 billion, but according to Namibia's ICT Alliance, only between N$400 million and N$450 million goes directly into the ICT sector, with the remainder going into the banking, retail and financial industries. However, the vice-Chairperson of the Namibian ICT Alliance suggests that "Most of the IT support to these sectors are done by South African companies, and there is little transfer to the local industry, which is currently in turmoil".

For more information, please see here.

Telefónica Group today posted a 3'830 million euro profit for the first half of the year, fuelled by a 10.6% increase in revenues and an 11.3% increase in customer base to achieve a total of 212.6 million 'accesses' or customers by the end of June 2007.  Telefónica Group has subsequently raised its guidance for its full year results and now expects full year revenues to increase by 8-10%.  By the end of June 2007, Telefónica had 9.1 million retail broadband accesses, nearly 155 million mobile accesses and in excess of 1.3 million pay TV accesses.

Telefónica Espana accounted for 36.6% of consolidated Group revenues, while Telefónica Latinoamérica was the source of 34.6% of consolidated Group revenues. Telefónica O2 Europe contributed just over a quarter or 25.4% of Group consolidated revenues. Highlights of interest include:

- high growth in mobile data revenues for Telefónica Espana, with data Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) achieving its "highest growth in years, due to content and connectivity services";
- A total of 121.8 million accesses for the Telefónica Latinoamérica group, up nearly 14% year-on-year, with mobile clients exceeding 90 million for the first time;
- Revenue growth for Telefónica O2 Europe remains steady at an expected 11-14% for the full year.

For more information, please see here.

 

 

The UK regulator OFCOM has just published new research on the market for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the United Kingdom.  OFCOM estimates that VoIP services had been used by 2.4 million UK households by the end of 2006, double the estimated total at the end of 2005. Nearly one quarter of VoIP users (23%) claimed to be with more than one service provider. However, OFCOM found that a large proportion of users were unaware of all the different types of services they had access to and concluded that there seems to be a substantial lack of knowledge among VoIP users about the services they have or can access.

The research report on VoIP has been released to coincide with OFCOM's latest consultation on the regulation of VoIP services. OFCOM has conducted two previous consultations on VoIP in October 2004 and on VoIP regulation in February 2006, followed by a Statement in March 2007. In its latest consultation, OFCOM proposes that any VoIP provider offering VoIP calls to traditional fixed phones or mobile phones ("type 2 VoIP services"), or making calls to and receiving calls from traditional fixed phones or mobile phones ("type 4 VoIP services") should allow users to call 999.  The closing date for responses is by 30 September 2007.

For more information, please see here.

BT Group announced its results for the first quarter of 2007. Total revenue has risen by 3.5 per cent to £5,033 million in the quarter with continued strong growth in new wave revenue. Growth in total revenue outweighted the rise in EBITDA before specific items and leaver costs, which grew by 2.8 per cent.

Strong growth was observed in 'new wave' revenue generated from networked IT services and broadband, which grew by 11 per cent more than last year to £1,815 million and now accounts for 36 per cent or more than a third of the BT Group’s revenue. Networked IT services revenue grew by 8 per cent to £1,061 million, and broadband revenue surged by a massive 19 per cent to £540 million.

By 30 June 2007, BT had 11.2 million wholesale broadband connections (DSL and LLU), including 2.4 million local loop unbundled lines, an increase of 2.5 million connections year on year as the broadband market continues to show strong growth. In the UK, BT is rebuilding its core national network and reports that, following a successful pilot trial of in Cardiff, it is on track to launch 'next-generation broadband' services delivering up to 24Mb nationally in early 2008.

For more information, please see here.

Europe puts in a solid performance in the latest analysis of digital opportunity by the ITU. Although Europe loses out on the first two places in digital opportunity to the broadband kings of Asia (the Rep. of Korea and Japan), five out of the top ten countries are European. Denmark ranks at Number three and, alongside Japan, is a top contender for first place next year, if its current growth rates in broadband subscribers (fixed and mobile) continue.

Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands lead Europe. Within Europe, a sharp divide in digital opportunity between Eastern and Western Europe is apparent (with Estonia and Lithuania notable exceptions to this rule, with over 90% of their Internet subscriber base using broadband connections). A combination of rising disposable incomes, falling prices for broadband and a thirst for new technologies among the countries of Eastern Europe mean that this gap is closing fast, however. Albania and Moldova are notable for having the lowest digital opportunity in Europe; at 107th and 111th worldwide (out of 181 countries measured by the Digital Opportunity Index), their 'low' rankings within Europe help put the global digital divide into context.

 

For more information, please see the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

Asia-Pacific continues to lead the world in digital opportunity, home to five of the top ten countries in digital opportunity.  The Republic of Korea ranks first in digital opportunity with a DOI score of 0.80, but its lead is being fast eroded by Japan's strong gains in mobile broadband subscribership, which boosted its DOI score to 0.77.  If current growth rates continue, Japan could overtake the Republic of Korea as early as next year.

 

The Digital Opportunity Index measures advanced technologies such as broadband Internet and 3G mobile, which means that it is ideally designed to capture the growth in these markets.  In Singapore, the "wired island", fixed broadband Internet subscribers rose as a proportion of the Internet subscriber base from 70% to 83%, which boosted its Utilization Index and catapulted it to fifth place in the world rankings.

Asia-Pacific also encapsulates a regional digital divide, however. It is home to Myanmar, with the third-lowest digital opportunity in the world, at 0.04, as well as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Lao PDR and Korea PDR. These are issues that organisations such as the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) (which has launched an e-ASEAN Framework Agreement) and LirneASIA are fighting to address.

For more information, please see the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

The ITU has published its latest evaluation of digital opportunity for the Americas.  In line with the concerns of the US Federal Communications Commission over the United States' lacklustre performance in fixed broadband - in 2006, the US FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps noted that the United States came twenty-first in the ITU's DOI 2005 - Canada continues to lead the Americas in digital opportunity, although its lead over the United States has narrowed considerably from 0.03 in the DOI 2005 to 0.01 in 2006. This is due to strong gains by the United States in mobile penetration (which rose from 61 mobile subscribers per 100 capita to 70 per 100 capita in 2005) and an increase in broadband subscribers over the same period of over 12 million.

Certain Caribbean islands also do very well in the DOI, due to their high dependency on tourism and service industries such as banking, requiring good communication links. In 2006, digital opportunity in both the Bahamas and Barbados exceeded 0.60, while islands such as Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, Jamaica, Dominica, Trinidad & Tobago and the Dominican Republic all made strong gains in digital opportunity. The first lady of the Dominican Republic, Dr. Margarita Cedeño de Fernández, was honoured with a World Information Society Award this year by the ITU for her work in establishing 135 Community Technology Centres throughout the Dominican Republic. Not so at the other end of the scale, however, where digital opportunity in Haiti remained static at 0.15.  In Latin America, Chile continues to lead Latin America in digital opportunity, although Argentina's strong gains in Internet usage and fixed broadband subscribers have boosted its digital opportunity.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this map do not imply any opinion whatsoever
on the part of the ITU concerning the legal or other status of any country, territory or area
or any endorsement or acceptance of any boundary.

More information can be found in the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

WiMAXCounts.com provides data on the top operators in terms of BWA/WiMAX subscriber numbers as of Q1 2007. According to WiMAXCounts.com, three of the top nine operators originate in the United States (Clearwire, Mobile Pro and Aerotechtel), while two of the top nine operators are Spanish (Iberbanda and Banda Ancha). These results can be compared with findings from the research consultancy ABI Research, which projects that Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, and NextWave Wireless will be the three dominant mobile WiMAX service providers in the United States, with a range of mobile services to support different devices.

For more information, please see here.

WiMaxCounts.com suggest that the total number of WiMax subscribers worldwide is set to break through the one million subscriber count anytime soon. WiMaxCounts.com records 950 million WiMax subscribers by the end of Q1 2007, 17.5% up on December 2006 and equivalent to 85% growth year-on-year over Q1 2006. At the start of 2007, the market for WiMAX was growing at a rate of 150,000 subscribers per quarter.

This rapid growth in subscriber numbers confirms the growing market acceptance of WiMax. For more information, see here.

At least eleven African countries, including Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, now have Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). These countries can benefit from more efficient peering arrangements and cheaper international connectivity and bandwidth.

The current issue of Balancing Act Africa quotes the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigerian Internet Exchange (NIXP) as saying that eleven sub-Saharan African countries now have international Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), following the commissioning of Nigeria's Internet exchange in late 2006, at a cost of about 30 million naira, according to the online magazine Tectonic. Balancing Act Africa quotes Rudman as observing that "hitherto, all ISPs within Nigeria have been connected at foreign countries, which meant that the data of a student within Lagos browsing their university website located within an ISP in Lagos travels first to Europe or the United States, before getting back to the Nigeria. The scenario is just like going to Ibadan from Lagos via the U.K. or U.S.A.... This means that Africa is paying overseas carriers to exchange 'local' [continental] traffic on its behalf. This is costly and inefficient". Rudman estimates that the use of international bandwidth for national data or "unnecessary international transit" costs Nigeria over US$100 million each year. Rudman notes that by peering with other ISPs at the exchange point, it means all local internet traffic can remain local within the seven ISPs connected to NIXP and the first public telecom operator to connect to it last week - Starcomms.

African countries with Internet exchanges include: Angola, Botswana, Congo DR, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Telkom South Africa has announced tariff reductions for telecom services, which, if they are approved by the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA), should come into effect from 1 August 2007. The move follows earlier tariff reductions by its competitor MTN, which ITU reported in February of this year.

Balancing Act Africa notes in its current issue [Balancing Act Africa Issue 363] that Telkom, which until recently had the monopoly in fixed-line telephony, has been criticised for charging high tariffs that make it difficult for underprivileged people to access a wide array of telecoms services. Telkom's move would seem partly to address this criticism, with reductions of as much as 10% to 38% for ADSL broadband (depending on package and speed) and reductions of around ten per cent for long-distance and international calls. Prices for data transmission could be reduced by as much as 11.9%. Telkom notes that it filed an overall price decrease of 1.2% on its regulated basket of products and services with ICASA. Such a move should help make telecom services more affordable for South Africa's substantial rural populations and urban poor.

For more information, please see here.

Antigua may have only a small population of 70,000 people, but it is certainly facing some big issues.  According to an article yesterday in the Antigua Sun newspaper, the use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has increased exponentially over the last couple of years, while the telephony voice calls revenue of the Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA) revenues have been stagnant, and even declining. VoIP has been illegal in Antigua since the introduction of the Telecommunication Law in 2003, but an article in Telecom Web suggests thatthe Government may now move to enforce this ban, on the basis that they are losing tax revenues from VoIP services.

Telecom Web also suggests that the move may be linked to the massive revenue losses that Antigua is suffering from the U.S. gambling ban (an issue that has been pursued though the WTO). In the long-term, VoIP may be legalized as part of moves towards liberalization and the ending of Cable & Wireless' monopoly. The Antigua Sun quotes Darren Derrick, general manager for Digicel, a competitor in Antigua as saying that negotiations over liberalization have not been going the way he had hoped.

Antigua represents a microcosm of larger issues facing many other countries and small island states heavily dependent on tourist and telecommunication revenues.

The ITU has conducted a survey of the legal and regulatory status of VoIP around the world in 2006. For more information, see here.

In this year's edition of the World Information Society Report 2007, ITU includes the very latest statistics monitoring the evolution of the digital divide, using a variety of statistical techniques. The digital divide is narrowing most rapidly in mobile telephony, with one in two people in the world expected to have access to a mobile phone by the end of this year. Low-income countries are making important gains in mobile telephony (see Figure), with mobile phones outnumbering fixed lines by seven to one in LDCs and by as much as nine to one in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The digital divide is also narrowing in terms of Internet usage.  In 1997, the nearly three-quarters of the world's population living in low-income and lower-middle income economies accounted for just 5% of the world's total Internet users.  By 2005, they accounted for 32.5% or nearly a third of all Internet users. The digital divide is evolving, however, and gaps in access in the high-speed broadband technologies that will matter the most in tomorrow's 'information economy' are more marked - low-income economies accounted for under 1% of total broadband subscribers worldwide, while lower-middle income economies accounted for just 20% or one fifth of the global total.  The digital divide may be narrowing, but it is taking on new aspects in terms of speed and the quality of access.

"Chapter two: Bridging the Digital Divide" of the World Information Society Report 2007 can be read here.

The ITU has monitored trends in broadband subscribers and the price of broadband services around the world since 2002.  By early 2007, broadband was commercially available in 170 countries, with the latest country to launch commercial ADSL services being Lesotho in early 2007.

In 2002, broadband services were available in just 81 countries, mostly industrialized OECD countries, transition economies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and some developing countries in Asia-Pacific.  By 2006, the number of countries with commercial broadband service had more than doubled to reach a total of 166 countries, with a number of operators in African countries launching broadband services, including in Botswana, Ghana, Rwanda and Libya.

Chapter three: The Digital Opportunity Index of the World Information Society Report 2007 tracks growth in the Information Society around the world, particularly in the more advanced broadband technologies of 3G mobile and broadband Internet service.  It examines key trends in telecom markets, such as whether subscribers are 'cutting the cord' and the death of dial-up.  To download the text of the chapter for free, please click here.

Etisalat Egypt claimed to have achieved a customer base of 400,000 subscribers at the end of its first month of operations, after officially launching operations on 30 April 2007.  This is strong subscriber growth in the booming Egyptian mobile market, which Etisalat shares with Vodafone Egypt and MobiNil.

As previously reported by ITP.net, the Egyptian Communications Minister, Dr. Tarek Kamel, recently announced Egypt would offer a licence for a second fixed services operator, ending the monopoly of the incumbent operator, Telecom Egypt. According to a report by news agency MENA, Etisalat Egypt may bid for Egypt's second fixed line network licence.

Meanwhile, a press release by AMEInfo reports that Etisalat UAE and Research in Motion jointly announced 14,000 new subscribers to Etisalat's Blackberry service over the first year of operations, since the service was launched in May 2006.  Etisalat continues to go from strength to strength, in a region where mobile ownership is expected to exceed one in two people by the end of this year.

This year's edition of the World Information Society Report 2007 notes that growth in the global Information Society is not without risks and the Report examines the potential pitfalls of growth in the rise of online fraud, other risks and threats to cybersecurity. The expansion of the Internet is opening up many new opportunities for criminals to exploit online vulnerabilities and commit criminal acts or attack countries' critical infrastructures.

Threats in cyberspace are evolving rapidly and deserve greater attention for several reasons. The evolution of telecommunication networks towards Next-Generation Networks (NGN) with decentralized intelligence at the edges of the network could raise new security issues. The capacity and speed of networks are increasing, accelerating the transmission of malicious software alongside other Internet traffic. Transmission and encryption protocols are also constantly being updated. Meanwhile, convergence offers new opportunities for 'cross-infection', with the problems of one access device feeding into other ICTs.

Viruses, spyware, phishing, identity theft, denial-of-service attacks and zombie botnets are endangering cyberspace and jeopardising the very future of the Internet. According to one source, spam and other exploitation now account for up to 90 per cent of all email traffic over the Internet. Spam has now mutated from a general annoyance to a broader cybersecurity threat, acting as a platform for many other types of scams (see Figure).

Chapter five, "Challenges to building a safe and secure Information Society" of the World Information Society Report 2007 examines these issues.

Using age-disaggregated data from the most recent 2006 Infocomm Survey of the Singapore Infocomm Development Agency (IDA), ITU has calculated the age divide for Singapore using the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The Digital Opportunity Index is calculated on the basis of eleven indicators (grouped in three clusters of Opportunity, Infrastucture and Utilization) which can be disaggregated by age, gender, area or region to investigate different aspects of the digital divide.

Not surprisingly, in Singapore, the 15-29 age group makes the most use of ICTs, with a DOI score of 0.80, eight percentage points above the national Digital Opportunity Score of 0.72. Conversely, the 60+ age group lags behind the national average by some nine percentage points.  The total gap in digital opportunity between tech-savvy youth and the elderly amounts to some 17 per cent, with the greatest gaps observed in rates of Internet usage. The only area where the elderly (60+) do better than the youth of Singapore is in access to mobile broadband, which may reflect the greater disposable income of retired workers and ability to buy more sophisticated mobile handsets.

The Government of Singapore has introduced a comprehensive plan, IN2015, that seeks to address the age divide, amongst other issues.

This analysis is presented in chapter four of the ITU-UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007, available to buy here.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has just issued its Quarterly Performance Indicators of Telecom Services for the quarter ending 31 March 2007. Total gross telephone subscribers (wireless and wireline) surpassed 200 million subscribers for the first time. Total telephone subscribers grew from 189 million in December 2006 to 205 million in March 2007, an increase of 8% during the quarter. Year-on-year growth is even higher, with total telephone subscribers having grown by 46% since March 2006, mostly due to stunning growth in the mobile market, with over 5 million new mobile subscribers being added each month and 6.6 million mobile subscribers during the month of May 2007 alone. (For a comparison of April 2007/May 2007 results, please see here).

Intriguingly, trends in mobile Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) are mixed. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India reports that the all-India blended ARPU for GSM services fell by 5.7% from Rs 316 in December 2006 to Rs 298 in March 2007, while the all-India blended ARPU for CDMA services grew by 3.1% from Rs 196 to Rs 202 over the same period.

The number of broadband subscribers (with connections at speeds in excess of 256 kbit/s) grew by 13.8% over the first quarter of 2007 to 2.34 million at 31 March 2007.

These performance indicators confirm that the impressive growth in the Indian telecom market is continuing. Such growth is contributing to progress towards the milestone of half the world's population having access to a mobile phone, a milestone that ITU expects will be achieved before the end of this year.

For access to all recent press releases by the TRAI, please see here.

Dr. Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the ITU, participated in the 17th World Economic Forum on Africa. Under the headline theme "Raising the Bar", this high-level gathering of governments, business, international organisations, civil society and experts focused on leveraging Africa’s strategic role in the global arena. It featured innovative partnerships to sustain growth, address human and infrastructure capacity constraints and assess opportunities for an improved African investment climate.

Dr. Touré contributed a chapter to the African Competitiveness Report 2007 which overviews the ICT landscape in Africa.  It considers the relationship between ICTs and competitiveness with reference to the latest research, examines the changing regulatory and policy landscape in Africa, provides the latest summary statistics on operators and markets and information on a number of planned infrastructure initiatives.  It concludes that the private sector is forging ahead with the introduction of new technologies to grow the mobile and broadband markets. The rise of African strategic investors such as Vodacom, Orascom and Celtel recording strong subscriber growth is especially impressive.

To read Dr. Touré's contributory chapter, please see here. The African Competitiveness Report 2007 is available from the website of the World Economic Forum. For more information on the event, please see here.

ITU and UNCTAD are delighted to announce the publication of the World Information Society Report 2007, published on 16 May 2007. The Report seeks to benchmark progress in meeting the WSIS targets, to be achieved by 2015 at the latest, and evaluates the evolution of the digital divide. It presents 200 pages of analysis of the latest trends in ICTs, exploring whether consumers are 'cutting the cord', the death of dial-up and growth in broadband and 3G. It evaluates the digital divide using a variety of techniques and finds that the strong growth of mobile telephony offers the greatest potential to bridge the digital divide.

Using the methodologies endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society, it finds strong growth in digital opportunity around the world. Asian and European countries continue to lead in digital opportunity, but there are shining examples of strong progress in the take-up of ICTs in Africa - five of the ten top gainers in digital opportunity are African economies. Last year's World Information Society Report benchmarked the gender divide and regional divides. This year's Report uses the Digital Opportunity Index to benchmark gaps in access and use of ICTs by different age groups in the age divide in Singapore.

Growth of the Information Society is not without risks, however, and online security threats remain a cause for concern, however. Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs was a key aim of WSIS, and the report examines the evolution in cyberthreats, including spam, spyware, botnets, identity theft, breaches of privacy and other risks associated with online transactions.

The Report also examines national strategies that various countries have adopted to promote growth in ICT development, illustrating these with reference to a wealth of country case studies. It presents examples of successful projects promoting WSIS implementation around the world. The Report combines theory with authoritative analysis from the ITU and UNCTAD and country examples from around the world. It is due to be presented to the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, holding its Tenth Panel Meeting in Geneva next week to discuss progress in WSIS implementation.

For more information, please see here. Articles will follow all next week, to highlight different aspects of the Report.

The second edition of the World Information Society Report: Beyond WSIS is going to be launched on the occasion of the World Information Society Day on 16 May 2007.

Published by ITU and UNCTAD, this report looks beyond the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS, Geneva 2003 - Tunis 2005) to the creation of an inclusive, people-centered and development-oriented Information Society, open to all. Some of the themes covered in the report are: the evolution of the digital divide, trends in the information society, ICT growth strategies, cybersecurity and WSIS implementation. The report tracks progress in digital opportunity for 181 economies over the past few years since the start of the WSIS process and is accompanied by a series of tables providing the latest statistics on the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) worldwide.

The report has been created by the “Digital Opportunity Platform”, an open multi-stakeholder platform with contributions from governments, private sector, academics and civil society, as well as inter-governmental organizations.

More information on the forthcoming publication will be made available on its website in due course.

Customers with 3G mobile phones can now make international 3G Video Calls from Qatar. Following the successful launch of local 3G Video Calling last year in July 2006, the launch of International 3G Video Calling yesterday, on 25 March 2007, will allow Qtel's 3G mobile customers to make face-to-face 3G Video Calls to friends, family and clients in many different destinations around the world, to over 90 operators in 50 countries.

This is the latest in a string of innovations from the Qatari incumbent, Q-tel, which was one of the first operators to launch a Triple Play ADSL offering in the Middle East combining voice, IPTV and Internet access (p. 30 of Q-tel's Annual Report 2006) using its commercial MPLS (Multiple Protocol Labeling System) network.

For more information, see here.

On 21 February 2007, MTN South Africa reduced rates on its broadband data contracts and data bundles by as much as 20%. MTN customers can now also pay as little as 20c per MB when buying the 1GB data contract or data bundle. The offer applies to both contract and Pay as you Go customers on extended 24-month contracts.  With this price reduction, MTN "aims to bring mobile data within reach of a larger portion of our population”, according to MTN's marketing manager, Mr. Donovan Smith. MTN has also added a 500 MB bundle to its packages and now offers 10MB, 100MB, 350MB, 500 MB and 1GB bundles.

Broadband service providers in South Africa are innovating with a greater range of packages, pay-as-you-go or contract options, extended contracts and 'shaped' or 'unshaped' offers (by Telkom, offering prioritisation of certain protocols in traffic over others).  It is hoped that this will do more to boost the number of broadband subscribers in South Africa, which was second to Morocco in 2005 and 2006, from near equality in the total number of broadband subscribers at the end of 2004.

For more information, please see here.

The 2007 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms Competition has just been launched.

The ITU Young Minds in Telecoms Competition is open to graduate students and recent graduates in economics, political science, law, literature, telecommunications, computer science, information systems and related fields. The objective of the ITU Young Minds Programme is to give young people valuable exposure to the international telecommunication environment and to the work of the ITU. The first Young Minds in Telecoms Competition was launched by the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in 2005. Information on the winners and runner-ups for the 2005 and 2006 competitions are available on the Young Minds in Telecoms website. One of the main criteria for evaluation is the submission of an essay and those essays that were highly-ranked in the evaluation process have been made available on the Young Minds in Telecoms site.

The essay topics for the 2007 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition are:

• What do you understand by the concept of technological convergence and what are its key trends?
• In your view, what are (1) the main benefits arising from technological convergence as they relate to the information and communication technologies (ICTs) sector? (e.g. new devices, new applications, new services etc.), and (2) the biggest challenges brought about by technological convergence? (e.g. regulatory challenges, cybersecurity threats, socio-ethical implications etc.).
• How can we ensure that the drawbacks of convergence do not outweigh its benefits?

See details on how to take part in the 2007 Young Minds in Telecoms competition here.

Telecom Lesotho is seeking to introduce ADSL, on the basis that high-speed access will improve Internet service provision in Lesotho. It has applied to the Lesotho Telecommunications Authority, which has initiated a Public Consultation on its proposed tariffs, closing today. The launch of ADSL in Lesotho would bring the number of African countries with high-speed Internet access (over either DSL or dedicated leased lines) to thirty-five so far this year, up from thirty last year.

For more information, please see here.

On 3 February 2007, the Afghan Ministry of Communications issued two regional Local Fixed Service Provider (LFSP) licenses, in accordance with the Government's telecommunication and ICT policies. The first license of this kind was issued for seven northern provinces in May 2006 to Wasel Telecom, the Afghani arm of Dubai-based Modern Technologies International. The two further licenses have been issued to Shaheen and Ertebat telecommunication companies. It is hoped that these licenses will stimulate the telecom market, reduce prices and increase subscribers.

For more information, please click here.

The Chairman’s Report from the ITU New Initiatives Programme workshop on "What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?", held in March 2006 in the ITU Headquarter, is available on the event's web-page.

To download the document, please click here. 

The ITU New Initiatives workshop The Future of Voice (15-16 January 2007, Geneva) discussed, inter alia, the regulatory implications of the development of voice communications. A background report Regulatory Trends: New enabling environment framed the debate. Authors of the paper are Andy Banerjee from Analysis Group Inc, Gary Madden and Joachim Tan from CEEM at Curtin University of Technology, Australia.

In a few short decades, radical changes in technology, market institutions, and regulatory and competition policy have transformed telecommunications markets. Telecommunications service traditionally meant voice communication. However, with the deployment of triple play, the phenomenon of convergence has emerged as both the principal offspring and driver of the technology-market-policy triad. Convergence is bringing together previously disparate communication services, content, and consumer market segments. This phenomenon raises questions about the future of communications and, in particular, about that of voice communication.

The authors maintain the hypotheses that: the future of voice communication will be the future of all forms of electronic communication; and the market will most likely be served by a combination of broadband technologies, prominent among them end-to-end fibre (wireline) and 3G (wireless) technologies (and their successors). In this context, the central question is: how must regulatory policy change to facilitate such a future? Specific regulatory or policy reforms in future communications markets marked by convergence and intermodal competition must be guided by the dynamic efficiency principle.

First, when the last mile access bottleneck disappears, regulatory focus should shift from the terms on which service and content providers can gain access to end users towards ensuring interconnection among IP networks, and between IP networks and access networks. Peering or bill and keep arrangements may suffice, in the absence of significant asymmetry in cross-network traffic patterns, for most forms of interconnection.

Second, any blanket network neutrality rule should be resisted. While undue discrimination may still need to be monitored and rooted out, traditional common carrier regulations accompanied by a blanket network neutrality rule can actually prove to be counter-productive.

Third, regulatory authorities must redesign licensing regimes to adapt to new market realities created by convergence and intermodal competition. Such licensing regimes should not favour the emergence of a particular technology or service but rather allow the market to make those decisions.

Finally, regulation for the future voice environment must mean prudent applications of discretionary policies. Those policies may include: providing incentives to develop and deploy small-scale, modular, and scalable broadband technologies; providing opportunities and systems for aggregating demand for broadband services; constraining international mobile roaming charges to encourage roaming and international voice communication demand; rejecting mandatory MVNO access to the networks of incumbent mobile operators unless specific market failure warrants such access; encouraging pricing models that recognise the multi-sided nature of emerging broadband markets; and renewing global efforts to control spam.

One of the eight background papers of the ITU New Initiatives workshop The Future of Voice (15-16 January 2007, Geneva) look at Communications in New Generation Networks. Authors of the paper are James Alleman from the University of Colorado and Paul Rappoport from Temple University, United States.

Based on demand side and supply side considerations, the authors focus on market dynamics and the drivers of change. While technologists or policymakers may prefer one market structure outcome over another, what the consumer is interested in is communications – simple, easy-to-use, cost effective and available on demand. These needs are not always satisfied in the current market environment. Currently, they must be satisfied with multiple networks and devices. Business and households now have fixed telephones, mobile phone (many times more than one for a household), a broadband connection which could be satellite, cable, DSL, WiFi, or WiMax, and Blackberries. Are consumers indifferent to technology and the protocols to communicate? Does a consumer’s desire to “communicate” transcend any one platform? Voice is not a unique form of communication; e-mail, facsimiles, video phones, and self-generated content are all means to communicate. For the next generation of consumers, simplicity, availability and access are required. To satisfy these consumers, the diversity of communications has significantly expanded. From this perspective, consumer demand is the driver of change.

An example of the change-driving demand is the music download on internet. The figure below clearly underscores the substitution in terms of the preferred or growing importance of the internet as a channel for delivery. The popularity of MP3 files is due in part to the increased level of choice – downloading singles, creation of custom play lists and so forth. However, perhaps the most significant factor is price. The rapid growth in MP3 downloads suggests that demand for MP3 downloads in elastic and that there are large cross price elasticities.

Do people communicate more taking opportunity of all new channels and modalities and are all of these driving telecom revenue bigger while best serving the users? While the popularity of online downloads is constantly growing, real revenue growth is lagging behind, as this is a service substitution phenomenon (MP3 music files for music CDs) rather than new source of revenue. Clearly the magnitude of own and cross-price elasticities need to be considered when assessing the convergence of communication, entertainment and data services as well as the future of ICT as a whole.

The full paper is available at the Future of Voice website.

ITU is hosting a Workshop on “Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management” in collaboration with the Ugo Bordoni Foundation (Italy), 22-23 January 2007.

The dramatic increase in demands for radio spectrum from every industry segment – from broadcasters, wireless carriers or satellite providers to emerging unlicensed services or even the public safety and homeland security community – has highlighted the critical importance of spectrum management and related spectrum issues. This timely conference will present an unusually broad and deep look at the full range of issues affecting today’s “spectrum wars”.

Furthermore, in light of the work being carried out under the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme this workshop will serve as a basis of discussion for possible future approaches, in line with recent technological developments, attempting to provide realistic forecasts in an increasingly ubiquitous, user centric and converged telecommunication environment.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme can be found here.

All presentations can be found here.

More information about the international workshop on the topic can be found here.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

ITU held a workshop entitled The Future of Voice on the 15^th and 16^th of January 2007 at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. This workshop organized under the ITU New Initiatives Programme focused on the role of voice communications in the future ubiquitous network environment.

For a long time, voice services have been the principal driver of telecommunication revenue and will probably continue to drive demand for some time. Nevertheless, it is becoming harder to sustain traditional models of per-minute pricing for voice as the service is increasingly carried over data channels that are priced on a flat-rate basis. Some of the key issues discussed during the event include:

• How are voice services evolving and what does this mean for users, providers and the telecommunication industry as a whole?
• How will fixed, mobile and internet-based phone services converge?
• How does messaging, gaming, multimedia fit in?
• Are voice services of the future most likely to be billed by the minute, by volume, or on a flat rate basis?
• What regulatory freedom should be given to operators to bundle voice with other services (e.g., multiple play: voice, video, internet and mobility)?
• What form of licensing, if any, will be necessary for voice service providers?
• What will be the new business models and revenue streams?
• What are the residual universal service obligations (e.g. emergency calls) that should be imposed on voice providers?

All presentations and background papers as well as a web archive of the event (video and audio) are available on the workshop website.

An interesting essay on "Blogging, the nihilist impulse" by Geert Lovink dating from March 2006 quotes the Blog Herald as the source of a recent estimate of a total of 100 million blogs worldwide. Besides their liberating potential and "counter-cultural folklore", Mr. Lovink sees blogs as part of an unfolding process of "massification" of the Internet.

The author quotes Microsoft's former in-house blogger Robert Scoble as the source of a list of five features that make blogs so hot. The first is the "ease of publishing", the second is what Mr. Scoble calls "discoverability", the third is "cross-site conversations", the fourth is permalinking (giving the entry a unique and stable URL) and the last is syndication (replication of content elsewhere).  Given this functionality, the number of blogs worldwide is clearly set to increase.

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

Chapter five, Living the digital world, concludes the report by examining the social impacts of digital technologies and imagining how lifestyles might further evolve in the digital age.

The telecommunications industry began as a digital-only world. Between the invention of the telephone, in 1876, and the development of the first digital switch, exactly 100 years later, the telecommunications industry took an analogue detour. But rapid innovation over the last few decades indicates that the digital world is firmly back on track. And although the transition from the analogue to the digital world is not yet complete, the direction of change is clear and irreversible.

What are the challenges to the digital world? The first, and most obvious challenge, is to complete the process of network digitisation.

•  The process of digitisation in the fixed-line telecommunications industry, which began in 1976, is now more or less complete, at least in the inter-urban and international network, as the last analogue exchanges are phased out.

•  In the mobile communications industry, digital systems have slowly taken over, starting with the first GSM network in Finland in 1991. Many analogue networks have now been closed down altogether.

•  The internet has always been, in essence, a digital network but the use of dial-up modems in the access network is still based on analogue technology. Internet subscribers are slowly migrating from narrowband to broadband on both fixed and mobile networks.

All chapters of the digital.life report are available online free of cost.

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

Chapter four, identity.digital, explores the changing nature of the digital individual and the need for greater emphasis on the creation and management of digital identity. Individuals today spend more and more time using digital means to communicate and transact, be that sending and receiving e-mail, talking on a mobile phone, participating in a social networking site, buying music, booking vacations over the internet, or playing an online game. The complexity of the interaction between technology, personal consumption and the construction of identity in the virtual space is a growing area of research. Users of digital technologies have a wide scope for constructing their virtual identity.

The mostly nameless and faceless environments of cyberspace create an ideal background for developing alternate identities or digital personae. At the same time, there is an alarming increase in the amount and quality of data generated, collected and stored in the digital world. The sheer amount of this data is alarming, but so too is its nature, which is ever more detailed and personal. The public and private spheres of existence are experiencing a progressive blurring of the boundary separating them. These developments create a new set of concerns relating to human identity, data privacy and protection.

Information regarding individual identities is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity, and as a consequence, its protection and management are vital to a healthy and inclusive digital world. To learn more about these issues, download identity.digital.

For more information, please contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int. All chapters of the digital.life report are available online free of cost.

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

Chapter three: business.digital considers the challenges and opportunities facing businesses in adapting to fast-paced innovation, before addressing whether a fresh approach to policy-making might be required in light of rapid media convergence.

The market addressed in this report may be interpreted as the combined sectors of telecommunications, computing and broadcasting which together constitute the sector for information and communication technologies (ICTs). This is a global market worth some USD 3.13 trillion in 2005, equivalent to around 7.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is a market that continues to grow at a slightly faster rate than global GDP, at around 6 per cent during 2005.

Just over two-thirds of the market comes from sale of services, with telecom services being the main component. Of the remaining 29 per cent, which derives from equipment sales, computer hardware is the major component, despite the continuing fall in the price of semiconductor chips for a given level of performance following “Moore’s Law”. Telecoms is the largest sector overall, but has the lowest ratio of equipment to services sales (at 1:5). By contrast, in the broadcasting market, the ratio between sales of broadcast services to sales of equipment is approximately 1:1, with the majority of service sales income coming from advertising rather than directly from end-users. Of course, there can be endless debates as to how the market is defined: should semiconductors or music be included, for instance? Should consumer electronics be left out? Does “internet” constitute a whole market segment in its own right? Such queries are normal in a sector where technological change is a driving force.

For more analysis on the ICT market today and the ICT bubble in the 1990s, as well as to discover why digital business is big business download business.digital.

For more information about the report, please contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int. All chapters of the digital.life report are available online free of cost.

Mobile broadband is discussed extensively in ITU's new freely available digital.life report released in conjunction with ITU TELECOM World 2006 in Hong Kong, China. Although mobile broadband has been slower to take off than fixed-line growth, it is now beginning to show comparable growth, with just over 60 million subscribers at the start of 2006. Although this represents only one third of the level of subscribers for fixed-line broadband and the speeds on offer commercially are generally slower, the gap between fixed and mobile broadband is narrowing and in some economies, such as Italy, Japan and the Republic of Korea, mobile broadband now constitutes more than half of the total broadband subscribers. Factoring in mobile broadband now produces some new interesting broadband rankings for both penetration per 100 inhabitants and total subscribers per country:

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

Chapter two: lifestyles.digital, examines the key technologies and services enabling new digital lifestyles, including higher-speed networks and content distribution. Digital technologies are fast becoming indispensable. A growing array of devices and technologies are on offer today, making users much more mobile. These range from slimmer and faster laptops, to MP3 players with video capabilities and mobile phones with high-speed internet access. While it took around 21 years to reach the first billion mobile users, the second billion signed up in just the three years. By contrast, it took some 125 years to reach the first billion fixed-line users (see figure below).

In the cellular industry, the evolution from second to third generation networks is arguably just as important as the jump from analogue to digital (which took place more than a decade ago) and is proceeding much more rapidly. By the end of 2005, the number of subscribers to 3G mobile networks of broadband speed (equal to or greater than 256 kbit/s in one for both directions) was just over 60 million and a further 50 million or so were added during the first six months of 2006, passing the 100m subscribers mark. This is a significant milestone and illustrates that this technology is approaching maturity.

Download chapter two: lifestyles.digital to discover more about underlying technological enablers of new digital lifestyles, including mobile technology, broadband networks, user-generated content, IPTV and so on.

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

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.

Prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World (December 4-8 2006 in Hong Kong), the 8^th in the series of ITU Internet Reports, entitled digital.life, begins by examining the underlying technologies for new digital lifestyles, from network infrastructure to value creation at the edges. In studying how businesses are adapting to fast-paced digital innovation, the report looks at how they can derive value in an environment driven by convergence at multiple levels. Moreover, a great challenge lies in extending access to underserved areas of the world. In light of media convergence, a fresh approach to policy-making may be required, notably in areas such as content, competition policy, and spectrum management. And as our lives become increasingly mediated by digital technologies, digital identities (both abstract and practical) take on a new dimension. Concerns over privacy and data protection do not seem to be sufficiently addressed by today's online environments. In this context, the report examines the changing digital individual, and outlines the need for improving the design of identity management mechanisms for a healthy and secure digital world.

The summary of the report highlights a few themes from each chapter to give a flavour of the report and puts forward key findings of digital.life.

 

For more information about the report as well as for downloading the full text of the report, please see the digital.life website or download the presentation from the digital.life press briefing.

You can purchase a hard copy of the report as well as a full electronic copy (including the complete statistical annex) online at the ITU Electronic Bookshop.

For more information about the report (including media enquiries), please contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int.

ITU's Strategy and Policy Unit has just released a new issue of SPU Flash: Special Retrospective Edition 2002-2006.

The electronic version of the SPU Flash is available here.

Click here to subscribe to SPU News.

As part of the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (November 2005), that “… ITU and other regional organisations should take steps to ensure rational, efficient and economic use of, and equitable access to, the radio-frequency spectrum by all countries ….”, ITU (Strategy and Policy Unit and Radiocommunication Sector) and and the Ugo Bordoni Foundation will jointly host a workshop to identify global trends and good practice in radio spectrum management.

The Workshop on "Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management" will be held from 22 to 23 January 2007 in Room C at ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.

It will examine, inter alia, the use of market mechanisms for both primary allocation of spectrum (e.g., auctions) and for secondary trading. It will look at recent trends in ITU Member States, the increasing demand for spectrum and will examine future challenges in developing policies for access to radio spectrum.

ITU Member States, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their spectrum related contributions to the meeting. All contributions will be posted on the meeting website. Please send your contributions to spectrum@itu.int

More information can be found here.

ITU's Strategy and Policy Unit has just released a new issue of SPU Flash.

The electronic version of the SPU Flash, Issue 10 is available here.

Click here to subscribe to SPU News.

The Telecom Evolution Business Forum 2006 was held in Moscow, Russia, from 23-26 October 2006 to evaluate current trends in telecommunication markets and the strategy options open to operators in response to an evolving market. The TeleEvo 2006 conference was hosted by Ernst & Young Russia and included two days' of hands-on training, followed by a further two days of presentations, panel discussions and Question & Answer sessions by experts, consultants, regulators and key stakeholders from the telecom industry, government and civil society. The conference combined a broad overview perspective of the evolution of worldwide telecom markets with more specific presentations by operators focused on markets in the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States. 

ITU's Phillippa Biggs spoke at the conference on VoIP: Current Trends and Future Evolution.  Her presentation examined the key forces driving the rapid growth in VoIP (such as growth in broadband), VoIP's current and projected market size, as well as regulatory responses to VoIP based on ITU's ongoing work surveying VoIP regulation.

Recent presentations by the ITU's Strategy and Policy Unit can be found here.

The gender divide is a key facet of the digital divide that merits the attention of policy-makers and ICT stakeholders, based on a substantial body of evidence from different countries and cultures that children's welfare can be enhanced through improved maternal education and hygiene.

Despite this, in many countries around the world, women are limited in their abilities to access ICTs and reap their benefits - in better communications, a wider education and better livelihood. This may be partly through external factors (e.g. women may be restricted in their access to a mobile/computer or prevented from frequenting Internet cafés) or through personal choice (e.g. ICTs are not perceived as a priority, and women may prefer to spend any income they may have on food and clothing).

Many development projects seek to address these issues - through community centres, programmes of free or subsidised access to ICTs for women, publicity/awareness campaigns and specific projects aiming to get women using ICTs - for education, information on healthcare and hygiene and e.g. contacts and networking, to sell trade and handicraft products to more markets at better prices. Examples of all these projects and many more can be found on the ITU Success Stories website.

However, impact analysis to monitor the evolution of the gender divide and the impact of projects such as these is difficult, as ICT indicators disaggregated by gender are extremely scarce. Detailed information on gender access to ICTs exists only for a tiny number of countries. In this year's World Information Society Report, Digital Opportunity (DOI) was assesssed for the Czech Republic, on the basis of information prepared for last year's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In the Czech Republic, women can readily become engineers, factory managers, lawyers and accountants on the basis of hard work and a relatively meritocratic education system. Men and women face the same prices for access to ICTs, but a slight difference in income and purchasing power. However, 8% fewer women have mobile phones, whereas the number of women with advanced, mobile broadband phones is only half that of men (see figure below). All in all, the evidence shows that the ICT gender divide in the Czech Republic is negligible, at around 5% less digital opportunity for women than for men.

This methodology is very flexible and can be applied to other countries and cultures where evidence suggests that the gender divide may be greater. ITU will continue to monitor efforts to extend the benefits of ICTs to women, as well as the progress made by countries in addressing this issue. The Digital Opportunity Index offers an accurate and informed analysis of the evolution of the gender divide in countries around the world.

The gender divide in the Czech Republic

Source: ITU, abridged from information provided by the Czech Statistical Office and the Ministry of Informatics of the Czech Republic.

For more information about the World Information Society report, please click here.  For information on the applications of the Digital Opportunity Index, please click here.

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 Technology presented 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: Egyptian Ministry 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 2006 ITU ‘Young Minds’ are now in their final week of the SPU-administered programme. Now entering its third year, the programme is designed to give young people valuable exposure to the international telecommunication environment and the work of ITU. Lucy Yu from the United Kingdom and Chin Yung Lu from Hong Kong SAR were selected as the 2006 Young Minds. As part of their work at the SPU, the Young Minds have been researching telecommunications technologies and preparing text for the ITU Internet Report 2006: digital.life. Statistics were collected and prepared by Kenichi Yamada.

The ITU Internet Report is a series of publications prepared on a yearly basis especially for ITU TELECOM events. The 2006 edition is the eighth in the series and will be published to coincide with ITU TELECOM World 2006, to be held in Hong Kong from 4th - 8th December. The report begins by examining the underlying technological enablers of new digital lifestyles, from upgrading network infrastructure to value creation at its edges. In studying how businesses are adapting to fast-paced digital innovation, the report looks at how they can derive value in an environment driven by convergence at multiple levels. The question of extending access to underserved areas of the world is considered as an important priority. In light of media convergence, a fresh approach to policy-making may be required, notably in areas such as content, competition policy, and spectrum management. Concerns over privacy and data protection are not being sufficiently addressed by current methods for managing identities online. As such, the report examines the changing digital individual, and outlines the need for improving the design of identity management mechanisms for a healthy and secure digital world.

As a conclusion to their research, the Young Minds each gave a presentation on selected topics that are each expanded upon in digital.life. Their presentations, entitled ‘A User-Generated Digital World’ and ‘Internet Protocol Television (IPTV): Television is changing…..’ can be seen here. In her presentation, Lucy Yu introduced the phenomenon of user generated content and talked about the effect that this is having on communities and social networking as well as the web’s wider knowledge base. She went on to talk about business models and the potential for growth and the threats that legislation and social acceptance may pose to user-generated content. Finally, she questioned future possible trends and explored how the market might evolve. In his presentation, Chin Yung introduced IPTV and illustrated how it works, and talked of the growing trend of media convergence between television services and the internet. He also listed the main differences between IPTV and Internet Video Streaming, which are often thought to be the same technologies. To conclude, Chin Yung displayed some IPTV deployments in Europe and Asia and suggested that IPTV can be an exciting opportunity for telcos.

Both ‘Young Minds’ have greatly enjoyed their time on the programme and would encourage any young people with a passion for telecoms to take part in the 2007 call. For further details on the Young Minds programme see the Young Minds webpage.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 70,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR) since July.

The World Information Society Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The Digital Opportunity Index can strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The DOI has been cited by the US Federal Communications Commission to measure the state of broadband in the United States, monitored in Ireland to track the price of broadband and used by the Egyptian Government to measure the urban-rural divide in Egypt.

Every day this week, SPU will profile a different practical application of the Digital Opportunity Index, to demonstrate its genuine use for policy purposes and to show how it can monitor WSIS follow-up. The Digital Opportunity Index is relevant for policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

To find out more, please 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.

"Chapter Four: From Measurement to Policy-Making" considers the changing telecommunications policy landscape, in areas of universal access/service, affordability, digital inclusion, broadband and wireless, amongst others. It shows how policy-makers can use the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to inform policy-making and policy design to achieve the WSIS goals. The DOI is not an abstract mathematical construction, but has real ‘hands-on’ applications for policy-makers, particularly in the context of the commitments made by governments at the World Summit on the Information Society.

Chapter Four uses the DOI for analysing digital gaps between regions at the national and international levels, for assessing gender gaps and for monitoring digital inclusion. The DOI is a useful policy tool that can be adapted to assess all of these data requirements. Chapter four of the World Information Society Report uses the DOI to analyse digital opportunity throughout the continent of Africa; perform a benchmark comparison of India’s performance relative to its neighbouring countries (see Figure below); examine regional disparities in digital opportunity in Brazil; and examine the gender gap in the Czech Republic. The chapter also outlines the next steps in ICT measurement for policy-making that the Digital Opportunity Platform plans to undertake.

Using the DOI for Policy Purposes

To find out more about the World Information Society Report, please click here.

"Chapter Three: Information Society Trends" tracks the shifting dynamics of the Information Society worldwide. It monitors the changes in digital opportunity across different countries and regions, and investigates those that have made the strongest gains in digital opportunity.

The Asian economies of the Republic of Korea and Japan continue to lead in digital opportunity, mainly due to their pioneering take-up of broadband and 3G mobile services. Nearly all Internet subscribers in the Republic of Korea are broadband subscribers, whilst Japan is the only market where Internet subscribers are most likely to access Internet over their mobile. Dramatic progress has been achieved by developing countries, however, which made the greatest progress in digital opportunity - notably India, where digital opportunity nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005, and China, which experienced remarkably strong gains in infrastructure. Some countries are leveraging their investments in infrastructure more successfully than others, however.

Major Gainers in digital opportunity (2001-2005)

Note: Component indices of the DOI are represented by O = Opportunity; I = Infrastructure; U = Utilization.

Chapter three analyses trends in digital opportunity, broadband speed and price, as well as the price of other telecommunication services. Find out more about the WISR here.

"Chapter Two: Measuring the Information Society" introduces the structure and methodology of the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). It explains why the component indicators were chosen and how they measure different aspects of digital opportunity, in: opportunity to access telecommunications (including basic access to telecommunications and affordability, with detailed price information); the basic infrastructure available in a country; and actual utilization of ICTs, in the use of the Internet and broadband technologies (fixed and mobile).

This chapter reviews trends in the individual indicators making up the DOI, including: the growth of mobile coverage (both 2G and 3G); a comparison of Internet and mobile prices; household penetration of ICTs and broadband and mobile Internet. It illustrates these trends with a wealth of country information and regional comparisons, to show how the DOI captures the growth in digital opportunity around the world.

The DOI is a flexible and forward-looking index, which includes measurement of the promising technologies of tomorrow in broadband and mobile Internet subscribers (as a proportion of total Internet subscribers and total mobile subscribers). It is the major index to date that includes up-to-date and current price information for both mobile and Internet access. Find out more and download the DOI as part of the World Information Society Report here.

Structure of the DOI:

The DOI is currently being updated for 2006 information, as part of the ongoing work programme of the Digital Opportunity Platform.

 

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" outlines the background to the World Information Society Report (WISR). It sets out the background to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the origins, aims and achievements of the Summit. In particular, it considers the call by member governments for an effective means and methodology for follow-up to monitor progress in building the Information Society through implementation of the Summit's recommendations.

The Geneva Plan of Action calls for a composite ICT Development (Digital Opportunity) Index to be published annually, or every two years, in a report on ICT development to clarify the magnitude of the digital divide in both its domestic and international dimensions.

Chapter One of the WISR reviews WSIS implementation since the Summit concluded in Tunis in November 2005, and explains why composite indices give a more complete picture of the development of the Information Society in any given economy than a single indicator. It gives an overview of the main composite Indices for measuring Digital Opportunity, and how they differ. It concludes by explaining the main virtues of the Digital Opportunity Index, especially for developing countries: it evaluates digital opportunity in 180 countries, the most of any index published to date; it is based on standard indicators (as defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development); it uses objective data rather than survey data; it can be split into its fixed and mobile components, so developing countries can be measured on the basis of their strengths; it uses household penetration data (which favour developing countries, on the basis of their large average household size); and it is simple and easy-to-use.

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" of the World Information Society Report can be downloaded for free here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 17,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR), over the two months since its publication.

As part of the ITU’s follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The DOI is part of the agreed evaluation methodology endorsed during the WSIS and will be published annually in the World Information Society Report to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society by 2015.

The WISR shows how the Digital Opportunity Index can be used to strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The Report is addressed to policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

Starting next week, SPU will profile a different chapter of the World Information Society Report each day, to show how the Information Society is evolving and how you can contribute to WSIS follow-up. 

For more information, please see the WISR website. 

ITU's Strategy and Policy Unit has just released a new issue of SPU Flash.

The electronic version of the SPU Flash, Issue 9 is available here. 

Implementation of the outcomes of the recently concluded World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) gathered momentum with the launch of the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS). High level representatives of twenty-two UN agencies met on Friday, 14 July 2006 at ITU Headquarters in Geneva under the chairmanship of ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi to facilitate the process.

UNGIS will serve as an interagency coordinating mechanism within the UN system to implement the outcomes of WSIS. The Group will enable synergies aimed at resolving substantive and policy issues, avoiding redundancies and enhancing effectiveness of the system while raising public awareness about the goals and objectives of the global Information Society. UNGIS will also work to highlight the importance of ICTs in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

See ITU Press Release for full text. 

A presentation entitled Networks in Transition: Emerging Policy and Regulatory Challenges of Next Generation Networks (PDF) was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, at the Masters of Communication Management (MCM) Annual Conference, Goodenough College on 6 July 2006 in London, England.

A presentation entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? (PDF) was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit at a London Business School Global Communications Consortium event entitled "Next Generation Networks - Investment & Regulation" on 29 June 2006 in London, England.

A presentation entitled Cybersecurity & Spam after WSIS: How MAAWG Can Help (PDF) was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit at the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group meeting held 27-29 June 2006 in Brussels, Belgium.

Will Content Be King?, presentation by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, at the 7 June 2006 conference Digital Content: a Modern Fairy Tale or the Old King in the New Clothes in Vilnius, Lithuania. The event was organized by the law offices of Norcous & Partners, in association with the Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania and Vilnius University Faculty of Law.

Winners of the Prix Ars Electronica 2006, one of the most important awards for creativity and pioneering spirit in the field of digital media, have been announced. The competition called for entries in 7 categories, including a youth competition and a grant for young creative talent:

• Digital Communities

• Computer Animation / Visual Effects

• Digital Music

• Interactive Art

• Net Vision

• u19 – freestyle computing

• [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant

The 2006 winner for the Digital Communities category was "canal*ACCESSIBLE". Canal Accessible was chosen because it addresses the accessibility or inaccessibility inherent in the topographical surroundings of people who have difficulty walking. The city of Barcelona was taken as an example:  handicapped individuals document the problems they encounter on their way through the city by using images and, in a few cases, sound recordings. This material is posted to the website, and the places at which each one was created are specified on a city map. These locations can then be accessed using a built-in “find” function. ITU's Lara Srivastava was Jury Member for the Digital Communities category, which explores the promotion of the social use of ICTs and the creation of common public goods, the sharing of knowledge, and the narrowing of the digital divide. This category was introduced to the Prix in 2004 by Jury Member Andreas Hirsch and Howard Rheingold. The other Jury members were: Steven Clift (Chairman, e-democracy.org) and Peter Kuthan (Founder, Tonga Online).

The prizes will be awarded at the annual Ars Electronica Festival (31 August - 5 September 2006). More information about the winners can be found here.

On 1-2 June 2006 the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in collaboration with London Business School (LBS) will hold a joint conference on the measurement of ICTs and the macro-, micro- and meso-impact of ICTs in the Information Society.

The conference will explore the impact of ICTs in industry, firms, growth and productivity. What is the real meaning of the digital divide? Can investment in ICTs help to reduce the productivity gap? Are countries really at a disadvantage through falling behind in take-up of ICTs?

For more details on this event please click here.

17 May 2006 On 17 May, World Information Society Day, ITU together with other partners (including UNCTAD and the KADO) launched a new series of reports entitled World Information Society Reports. It is intended to be an annual report, tracking progress in implementing the outcomes from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The reports will include a new benchmarking tool, the Digital Opportunity Index, which is a composite index for measurement of the information society, endorsed by the Tunis Phase of the WSIS. The summary of the report is available on the website at www.itu.int/wisr. The report itself will be published in June 2006.

Following a decision by ITU Council during Council 2006 held 19-28 April, the following documents are available: Council Document 2006/04: ITU activities related to Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks and management of Internet domain names and addresses; including activities related to Internet governance (PDF), Addendum 1 (PDF), Briefing Note (PDF).

References to related materials can be found here and here.

ITU's Strategy and Policy Unit has just released a new issue of SPU Flash.

The electronic version of the flash is available here. 

World Telecommunication Day (WTD) commemorates the founding of ITU on 17 May 1865. This year, WTD could carry added significance as 17 May has been identified by the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society as “World Information Society Day”.

While World Information Society Day is yet to be proclaimed, ITU, as the leading ICT agency of the UN system, upholds the idea and looks forward to its members to raise awareness of the role of ICT in achieving the development goals of all people.

For WTD 2006, the ITU Council chose the theme of Promoting Global Cybersecurity to highlight the serious challenges we face in ensuring the safety and security of networked information and communication systems.

In today’s interconnected and increasingly networked world, societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on our economies and on our societies. In order to safeguard our systems and infrastructure and in order to instill confidence in online trade, commerce, banking, telemedicine, e-government and a host of other applications, we need to strengthen the security practices of each and every networked country, business, and citizen, and develop a global culture of cybersecurity.

The urgency of promoting cybersecurity has been called for by the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in 2002, the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-2004) as well as the United Nations General Assembly (resolutions 58/199, 2004, and 57/239, 2002).

Invitations to organize national programmes in the context of promoting the theme Promoting Global Cybersecurity for WTD 2006 were sent to all ITU Member States and ITU Sector Members. Sector Members represent over 647 public and private companies and organizations with an interest in telecommunications. Also in conjunction with WTD 2006, the ITU is conducting a survey of cybersecurity trust and awareness. A list of links to the related materials includes:

• Message from the ITU Secretary-General, Yoshio Utsumi
• Circular Letter sent to ITU Member States
• Circular Letter sent to ITU Sector Members
• Cybersecurity Trust and Awareness Survey

 

From today's Wall Street Journal Europe: How France Became A Leader in Offering Faster Broadband

"For years, France's telecommunications industry was a state-owned monopoly with one of the world's most backward broadband markets. But thanks to deregulation six years ago, French consumers have access to high-speed Internet service that is much faster and cheaper than in the U.S.

One telecom company in particular has exploited the changes and created competition in France -- a start-up called Iliad. Over 1.1 million French subscribers pay as low as €29.99 ($36) monthly for a "triple play" package called Free that includes 81 TV channels, unlimited phone calls within France and to 14 countries, and high-speed Internet. The least expensive comparable package from most cable and phone operators in the U.S. is more than $90, although more TV channels are generally included.

"We are coming into people's living rooms and changing the way they consume telecom services," says Michael Boukobza, Iliad's 28-year-old chief executive."

Key to France's success has been the active intervention of ARCEP, the French communications regulator. At last week's ITU workshop What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?, François Varloot of ARCEP presented an overview of the French marketplace and their views on emerging symmetric and asymmetric IP regulatory issues.

On 23-24 March 2006 at ITU headquarters, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit hosted a high-level experts workshop entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? focused on the policy and regulatory challenges related to the deployment of IP-enabled NGNs. The following materials are now available:

• The original workshop concept document providing details on the objectives of the workshop
• Final Agenda
• Background papers:
  • Ruling the New and Emerging Markets in the Telecommunication Sector by Christian Wey, Pio Baake and Sven Heitzler 
  • Interconnection in an IP-enabled NGN Environment by Scott Marcus
  • Universal Service in an IP-enabled NGN Environment by Patrick Xavier
• All presentations and contributions
• Webcast archives

The draft agenda (PDF) for the 23-24 March 2006 ITU Workshop What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs is now available.

A related page of NGN Policy and Regulatory Initiatives around the globe is also available.

ITU hosted a consultation meeting on WSIS Action Line C2 (Information and Communications Infrastructure) on 9 March 2006, from 2-5 pm, in Doha, Qatar, during the ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference 2006 (WTDC-06). The meeting was chaired by ITU Secretary-General, Yoshio Utsumi.

The summary record of the meeting is available here. For more information, see the WSIS implementation page for action line C2 at: http://www.itu.int/wsis/implementation/c2/index.html.

At a workshop on ICT Indicators for performance benchmarking, held in Delhi 1-3 March, under the auspices of LIRNEasia and TRAI, representatives from the region's national statistical offices and regulatory agencies committed themselves to developing a set of ICT Indicators for the region based around "core set of ICT Indicators" defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development. This methodology means that they will be able to apply the composite "Digital Oppoportunity Index", which has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, including ITU, KADO and UNCTAD, for the measurement of the digital divide within the region and within individual countries.

The proceedings of the conference, which included presentations from TRAI, LIRNEasia, ITU, OECD and NRRI, are avaialble on the LIRNEasia website at: http://www.lirneasia.net/2006/03/workshop-on-ict-indicators-for-benchmarking-performance-in-network-and-services-development/.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has published comments received on its recent consultation paper on Issues pertaining to Next Generation Networks (NGN) released in January 2006. Also see accompanying Press Release.

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit is hosting a workshop entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? in March 2006. The ITU also has a website on related national, regional and international policy and regulatory initiatives.

The ITU hosted a workshop on “Networked RFID: Systems and Services” in Geneva, 14-15 February 2006.

The event focused on the use of RFID technology in networked environments, and review international standardization. Particular emphasis was given to the impact that networked RFID applications will have on telecommunication networks, especially on network and service capability requirements and interworking aspects.

Links to the meeting presentations and the audio webcast archive from the event are now available on the website.

Please see “Networked RFID: Systems and Services”, for further information.

In preparation for an upcoming ITU workshop entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?, to be held 23-24 March 2006 at ITU (see workshop concept document), an ITU NGN Policy and Regulatory site is now available and under development.

The new site contains links to the workshop and other resources as well as the most recent NGN-related news from the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit and the ITU-T.

The International Telecommunication Union is pleased to announce the 2006 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition.

The essay topics for this year's Young Minds competition are:

• What are the key opportunities and threats raised by the growing use of services over IP, such as voice (VoIP) and television (i.e. IPTV)?
• What are, in your view, the most important regulatory challenges raised by an increasingly wireless world?
• What does the term "internet governance" mean to you? What needs to change as a result of the World Summit on the Information Society outcomes?
• What, in your view, are the most important mechanisms available today for bridging the digital divide by bringing connectivity to underserved areas of the world?
• How can the interests of end-users in the information society (e.g. affordability, privacy protection) be balanced with the interests of business (bottom line, rapid innovation)?

Information on eligibility and how to apply can be accessed on the link below.

Deadline for applications is 17 March 2006.

Click here to learn more about the 2006 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition.

Another take on marketing the Internet of Things (via IP). The source can be found here.

The internet as we know it is set to transform radically, according to a new ITU Internet Report entitled The Internet of Things, specially prepared to coincide with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005. From an academic network for the chosen few created in the late 1960s, the internet is now a mass-market, consumer-oriented network being accessed by over 900 million people worldwide, through personal computers, mobile phones and other wireless devices. But this is only the beginning. According to ITU’s report, we are standing on the brink of a new ubiquitous computing and communication era, one that will radically transform the Internet, and with it, our corporate, community, and personal spheres. The new ITU report looks at key enabling technologies for ubiquity (e.g. RFID, sensors and sensor networks, telematics, robotics, nanotechnology) and how they might impact the future human and technological landscape.

At WSIS, the report was launched at a Press Conference and Panel Debate moderated by Kenn Cukier of The Economist. The lively debate included the following speakers and panelists: Nicholas Negroponte - MIT Media Lab, Olivier Baujard - CTO of Alcatel, Hitomi Murakami - VP General Manager of KDDI (Japan), Jonathan Murray - VP and CTO, Microsoft EMEA, Walid Moneimne, Senior VP and Head of EMEA Networks - Nokia, John Gage, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office - Sun Microsystems, and from the ITU, Lara Srivastava, lead author of the report.

WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity: Outcome and Next Steps (PDF) presented at the Global Symposium for Regulators, Yasmine Hammamet, Tunisia on 23 November 2005, Robert Shaw, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit

The WSIS Stocktaking Report has been officially launched during the World Summit on the Infrmation Society in Tunis. The report has been prepared on the basis of activities entered to the WSIS Stocktaking Database that by November 2005 contained more then 2500 entries. 

For the launch presentation see Stocktaking.pdf (1.47 MB).

For the WSIS Stocktaking Database see here. 

These comparative pie charts demonstrate an ongoing shift in Internet demographics from the Americas to the Asia-Pacific region. In 2001, the Americas had 38% of the world's Internet users and Asia-Pacific had 32%. In 2004, this is essentially reversed with Asia-Pacific having 37% and the Americas with 31%. Europe has kept a relative 29% share but Africa has seen a slight gain from 1% to 3%. Because of their much larger populations and potential for growth, the Asia-Pacific region will continue to take a larger and larger percentage of the world's Internet users.

Anti-Spam: les actions menées au plan international (PDF), Robert Shaw, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, 18 October 2005, presented to Coalition Anti-Spam Nord–Sud: Atelier de travail (Rabat, Morocco).

Promoting Global Cybersecurity, PDF, Robert Shaw, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, 6 October 2005, presented to ITU-T Study Group 17 Meeting (Geneva, Switzerland)

Update on ITU and WSIS Activities Related to Spam and Cybersecurity (PDF) presented at OECD Spam Task Force Meeting, Paris, France on 3 October 2005, Robert Shaw, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit

To further encourage the development of a ubiquitous network society, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, the Italian Ministry of Communications, the Ugo Bordoni Foundation and the Aosta Valley are hosting a Workshop on "Tomorrow's Network Today" that will be held in Saint-Vincent (Aosta), Italy on 7-8 October 2005.

This Workshop will discuss specific measures to help overcome potential challenges and determine possible future actions.

One session will be dedicated to Next Generation Networks (NGN) as a framework to harmonize the worldwide technical and functional basis needed to extend the use of integrated ICTs to as many users as possible.

During the workshop there will be an Exhibition which will bring together a wide range of leading industry participants as well as high-level representatives from government and regulators.

Click here for more information about the event.

The Chairman's report (PDF) from the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity held June 28 - July 1 2005 has been released.

The event was organized in the framework of the implementation of the Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action adopted on 12 December 2003, at the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and in preparation for the Tunis phase of WSIS, to be held from 16 to 18 November, 2005. The event website provides links to the final agenda, all background papers, presentations, electronic contributions, the Chairman’s Report and audio archives.

The four-day meeting was structured to consider and debate six broad themes in promoting international dialogue and cooperative measures among governments, the private sector and other stakeholders as well as promotion of a global culture of cybersecurity. These include information sharing of national and regional approaches, good practices and guidelines; developing watch, warning and incident response capabilities; technical standards and industry solutions; harmonizing national legal approaches and international legal coordination; privacy, data and consumer protection; and developing countries and cybersecurity.

The first day of the meeting focused on countering spam as follow-up to the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering Spam, held in July 2004.

At the recent ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity, Maria Cristina Bueti, Policy Analyst, Strategy and Policy Unit, ITU, presented a background paper entitled ITU Survey of Anti-Spam Laws and Authorities Worldwide. The survey was conducted in April 2005 and sent to ITU’s 189 Member States. The survey results, based on 58 responses received, showed that there are a number of countries that have already implemented anti-spam legislation. In some cases, countries use data protection laws or consumer protection laws to cope with spam issues. A number of countries do not have anti-spam legislation or any laws applicable to spam. A slide from her presentation is shown below.

The final version of a paper commissioned by the ITU entitled A Comparative Analysis of Spam Laws: The Quest for a Model Law (PDF) has been released. The paper was authored by Derek E. Bambauer, John G. Palfrey, Jr., and David E. Abrams, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School, for the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity held in Geneva, 28 June - 1 July 2005.

Executive Summary

Spam presents a significant challenge to users, Internet service providers, states, and legal systems worldwide. The costs of spam are significant and growing, and the increasing volume of spam threatens to destroy the utility of electronic mail communications.

The Chairman’s Report from the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering Spam in July 2004 emphasized the importance of a multi-faceted approach to solving the problem of spam and named legal governance as one of the necessary means. Our paper focuses on the potential nature of the legal regulation of spam, specifically the importance of harmonizing regulations in the form of a model spam law. We agree with the Chairman that the law is only one means towards this end and we urge regulators to incorporate other modes of control into their efforts, including technical methods, market-based means, and norm-based modalities.

Spam uniquely challenges regulation because it easily transverses borders. The sender of a message, the server that transmits it, and the recipient who reads it may be located in three different states, all of which are under unique legal governance. If spam laws are not aligned in these states, enforcement will suffer because the very differences between spam laws may mean that a violation in one state is a permissible action in another. Moreover, spammers have an incentive to locate operations in places with less regulation, and the opportunity to states to create a domestic spam hosting market may engage them in a race to the bottom.

Harmonizing laws that regulate spam offers considerable benefits, insofar as a model law could assist in establishing a framework for cross-border enforcement collaboration. To those enforcing the regulation of spam, harmonization as a model law effort offers: clear guidelines, easy adoption, enhanced enforcement, stronger norms, fewer havens for spammers, and the increased sharing of best practices. If such regulators then agree that harmonization can aid legal regimes intent on curbing spam, they must initially address four critical tasks: defining prohibited content, setting default rules for contacting recipients, harmonizing existing laws, and enforcing such rules effectively. This legal approach must be concurrently matched by efforts that employ other modes of regulation, such as technical measures, user education, and market-based approaches.

Our analysis of existing spam legislation gathered by the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit evaluated these laws’ elements to determine whether they were commonly included or not, and whether provisions were uniformly implemented or varying when present. Our research documents seven instances in which extant laws strongly converge: a focus on commercial content, the mandatory disclosure of sender/advertiser/routing, bans on fraudulent or misleading content, bans on automated collection or generation of recipient addresses, the permission to contact recipients where there is an existing relationship, the requirement to allow recipients to refuse future messages, and a mix of graduated civil and criminal liability. Also documented are five key areas of disagreement which are vital to a harmonized spam law but which have evaded consensus thus far: a prior consent requirement for contacting recipients, a designated enforcer, label requirements for spam messages, the definition of spam (whether it is limited to e-mail communication, or includes other applications, such as SMS), and the jurisdictional reach of the system’s spam laws. Naturally, a harmonization effort must tackle and narrow these zones of divergence in order to succeed.

Spam laws, whether harmonized or not, are at best only part of the solution to the spam problem and must be developed in concert with technical, market, and norms-based tools if the scourge of spam is to be substantially reduced. Efforts to harmonize the legal regulation of spam can serve as one effective means to solving the unique challenges spam presents. A model spam law is possible to develop, despite the many differences among the world’s spam laws.

The final presentation at yesterday's session on spam at the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity, John LEVINE, Chair, IETF Antispam Research Group (ASRG) made a presentation entitled the Limits of Security Technology: Lessons from the Spam Wars.

Luc Mathan from the relatively new Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) is giving a presentation on MAAWG's efforts to align the messaging industry stakeholders along three directives: Collaboration, Technology and Policy. The working group will address collaborating on cross-operator communications, best practices and technology to combat messaging abuse, as well as developing a cohesive point of view on public policy.  More information about MAAWG.

MAAWG members are developing a feedback loop mechanisms to deal with spam complaints between ISPs. They are also creating a contact database for service providers to be able to contact the appropriate person to deal with a messaging abuse situation.

At the start of the 21st century, our societies are increasingly dependent on information and communications technologies (ICTs) that span the globe. The ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity opens today and takes place from 28 June – 1 July 2005 at ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. This conference will examine the recommendations in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) first phase's Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action that relate to building confidence and security in the use of ICTs and the promotion of a global culture of cybersecurity. Now available on the meeting web site is the agenda (with links to presentations as they are given) and meeting background papers and contributions. The meeting is also being audiocast live over the Internet.

The meeting will specifically consider six broad themes in promoting international cooperative measures among governments, the private sector and other stakeholders, including:

• information sharing of national approaches, good practices and guidelines; 
• developing watch, warning and incident response capabilities;
• harmonizing national legal approaches and international legal coordination;
• technical standards;
• privacy, data and consumer protection;
• developing economies and cybersecurity.

The first day of the meeting will focus on countering spam as follow-up to the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering Spam held in July 2004.

There are lots different indices which rank the world's countries according to their level of penetration of ICTs, or their e-readiness. But until now there has been no agreement on what indicators to include, or what methodology to use. Now, in the framework of the implementation of the WSIS Plan of Action, a new methodology, prepared by Michael Minges of TMG Inc on behalf of ITU, has been released for developing a composite "Digital Opportunity Index". This new methodology is based on the core list of indicators agreed by the "Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development" of UN agencies at their meeting on 7-9 February 2005.

The draft methodology is structured around eleven indicators in four clusters:

• Affordability and coverage: Mobile phone coverage and tariff baskets for mobiles and Internet access.
• Access path and device: Penetration of fixed-lines, mobile phones and PCs.
• Infrastructure: Fixed and mobile Internet subscribers and international Internet bandwidth per inhabitant.
• Quality: Penetration of fixed and mobile broadband subscribers.

The index has been developed according to a modular methodology, so that it can be easily extended, adpated for national use, or used alongside other indices, such as the UNDP's Human Development Index. As a proof-of-concept, the methodology has been applied to 40 leading economies, with Sweden, Denmark, Republic of Korea, Switzerland and Hong Kong-China appearing in the top five. The index will be further discussed at the WSIS Thematic Meeting on "Multi-stakeholder partnerships for bridging the digital divide", to be held on 23-24 June 2005, in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

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At an ITU/EU (ENISA) Regional Seminar on Cybersecurity for CEE, CIS and Baltic States in Riga, Latvia, Robert Shaw of the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit has given a presentation (PDF) on the upcoming ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity which will be held June 28-July 1 2005 at ITU headquarters.

Other presentations on available on the event web site, including an update by Pernilla SKANTZ on the establishment of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).

The 2005 ASEM Cyber Security Workshop, Seoul will be held in Republic of Korea, hosted by the Ministry of Information and Communication of Korea. The ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity will follow shortly afterwards, June 29-July 1 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland.

2005 marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of the report of the Independent Commission ("Maitland Commission") on Worldwide Telecommunication Development, entitled "The Missing Link". To mark the anniversary, ITU has published the original report on its website, in English, French and Spanish.

The "missing link" of the title's report refers to the gap in telecommunications development, within and between nations. Although the term "digital divide" is now more common, the original arguments presented in the report are still quite valid. In particular, the report calls for "decisions at the highest political level" to bring "all of mankind within easy reach of a telephone by early part of the next century". Research by ITU (see the 2003 World Telecommunication Development Report) indicates that, by the start of this century, just over 80 per cent of the world's population were within reach of phones (increasingly mobile phones rather than fixed line telephones). Although this falls short of the original target, the "decisions at the highest political level" that the report calls for is now closer to fruition with the holding of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which is the first time this issue has been discussed at the Heads of State and Heads of Government level. The WSIS Declaration of Principles, adopted by the first phase of the WSIS in December 2003 contains the following commitment (para 10):

"We are also fully aware that the benefits of the information technology revolution are today unevenly distributed between the developed and the developing countries and within societies. We are fully committed to turning this digital divide into a digital opportunity for all, particularly for those who risk being left behind and being further marginalized". 

H.E. Ambassador Janis Karklins (Latvia) has invited WSIS stakeholders to take part in an informal consultation on implementation and follow-up of the Plan of Action for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), to take place in Room 26 of the United Nations in Geneva, on 13 June, from 10-13 and 15-18 (see invitation letter). The consultations will take place just ahead of the meeting of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance.

These consultations will concern, in particular, paras 10-11 of the draft Operational document for the Tunis phase of the Summit, and the compilation of comments on that draft. The deadline for further comments is 31 May 2005.

The consultations follow-on from those hosted by ITU's Working Group on WSIS (WG-WSIS) that were held on 2 May. 

The European Commission will hold an Open Workshop on Identifying Policy and Regulatory Issues of Next Generation Networks (PDF) on 22 June 2005. The workshop is directed towards policy makers and regulators, but is open to anyone who may have an interest. A provisional programme can be found here (PDF). Attendance is free of charge but registration is required.

The ITU is also hosting a workshop on NGN policy and regulatory issues in February 2006. More details will be announced later here.

This new Strategy and Policy Unit website gathers ITU resources related to Next Generation Networks.

The UK communications regulator OFCOM has done one of the first public consultations on the regulatory implications of Next Generation Networks (NGN), particularly with regard to BT's 21CN NGN initiative. The consultation document, entitled Next Generation Networks - Future arrangements for access and interconnection (overview,complete) explores the implications of Next Generation Networks (NGNs) for access and interconnection arrangements in the UK. The responses to the consultation are available here.

In BT's response to the consultation, it indicates some of its views on 21CN regulation:

Finally BT observes that some key aspects of the strategic positioning, NGN access and interconnect, are not addressed in Ofcom's questions. We wish to point to the following specific points.

1. We would expect that NGNs will blur many of the boundaries all of us in the industry currently take for granted. For example, the distinction between "operators" and "service providers" will diminish; and one could foresee an increase in pan-European alternative providers leveraging their IP infrastructure using next-generation interconnection more effectively. Further, as the barriers to market entry are lowered through technology advances and open standards, we would expect many new entrants to change the landscape - some with innovative value propositions and others by identifying and exploiting new arbitrage angles.

2. We believe end user customers will soon demand seamless, ‘any to any’ interworking between mobile and fixed networks. Operators will require the ability to roam on, and interconnect to, other national and international fixed and mobile networks in order to facilitate the provision of next generation services. The regulatory regime needs to become more technologically neutral and focus on economic bottlenecks, irrespective of the underlying network technology.

3. We believe that innovative services will be heavily reliant on intelligent interworking to provide coherent services. Therefore, cross platform access (including roaming and interconnect) to intelligence capabilities will be essential in ensuring further development of services and competition in the convergent marketplace.

4. BT is disappointed to see the level of potential regulatory intervention and micromanagement, both in commercial and technical terms, demonstrated in this Consultation. This is particularly inappropriate as it followed so soon after the second phase of the Telecoms Strategic Review, which promulgated a deregulatory agenda and a focus on regulating only bottlenecks. This Consultation also includes some substantive inconsistencies of approach which will need to be addressed.

5. It is critical that the outcome of this - and any later - consultation processes should be a regulatory regime which rewards investment and does not leave BT with a significant proportion of the 21CN investment risk, whilst distributing the investment returns across the industry. Ofcom will wish to consider this issue as they contemplate the responses to the Consultation.

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, in cooperation with the ITU-T and ITU-D, is organizing a workshop on NGN Policy and Regulation in February 2006.

Dissemination and Acquisition of Knowledge in a Mobile Age (PDF), Paper Abstract (PDF), presented by Lara Srivastava, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, 28 April 2005, Seeing, Learning and Understanding in a Mobile Age, Institute for Philosophical Research - Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, Hungary). The conference website and other papers are available here.

ZDNET Australia is reporting that Australian regulators have signed an agreement with Asia-Pacific nations to step up the war against spam.

Twelve Asia-Pacific communications and Internet agencies have joined the Australian Communications Authority in signing a memorandum of understanding -- the Seoul-Melbourne Anti-Spam Agreement --on cooperation in countering spam.

ACA acting chairman Bob Horton said the memorandum was "focused on sharing knowledge, information and intelligence about known sources of spam, network vulnerabilities, methods of spam propagation, and technical, educational and policy solutions to the spam problem".

Other agencies involved include:

• the Internet Society of China;
• Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau, Hong Kong (CITB);
• Philippines Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT);
• Philippines Computer Emergency Response Team (PH-CERT);
• the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC);
• the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan (METI);
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan (MIC);
• New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development (MED);
• Taiwan Computer Emergency Response Team / Coordination Centre (TWCERT/CC) and;
• the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Kingdom of Thailand (MICT).

The new document is based on an agreement signed in late 2003 between the ACA, the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) -- since renamed the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) -- and the Korea Information Security Agency.

Furthering cooperation among international initiatives in countering spam will also be discussed at the ITU's upcoming WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity which will begin with a countering spam day as a following up to ITU's meeting in July 2004 on countering spam.

Telecommunications Magazine has an article on ITU's recent Ubiquitous Network Societies workshop.

• So what does ubiquitous really mean? One take has a future where everything is connected to everything else by some type of wireless network. Alongside this is a future that sees superconvergence of everything from fixed to mobile networks spanning multi-platforms, multi-functions and multi-applications.
• In short, it sounds like the long-held dream of all telecom professionals everywhere, providing services and applications to everyone regardless of their location. “Technology and network access will become an afterthought to daily activities,” predicts [ITU Secretary-General Yoshio] Utsumi.

An experts workshop on Ubiquitous Network Societies was held from 6 to 8 April 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland at ITU Headquarters. The Chair's Report from the meeting is available here. Workshop presentations can be downloaded here. The background and thematic papers presented at the workshop include:

Thematic/Background Papers

• Background paper: Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of Radio Frequency Identification (PDF)  
• Background paper: Privacy and Ubiquitous Network Societies (PDF)
• Background paper: Ubiquitous Network Societies: Their impact on the telecommunication industry (PDF)

Country Case Studies

• Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of Japan  (PDF)
• Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of the Republic of Singapore (PDF)
• Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of Korea (PDF)
• Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of Italy (PDF).  See also Ubiquitous Network Societies - Survey on the Case of Italy (PDF)

ITU Session on Internet Governance (PDF) was presented by Robert Shaw, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, on 17 February 2005 in a session before the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG's) open consultations held at the United Nations. The subject of the talk was Internet Governance in context of evolution of telecommunications technologies and policies.

Our workshop in Seoul, Korea has finished today and it was a nice success. Lots of thought provoking ideas on how to globally improve information systems security and network infrastructure protection. Korea has been an excellent place to hold the workshop as they have made tremendous progress here on the technical, policy, legislative and enforcement fronts. There was a much consensus that there was a need for better international standards and implementation, information sharing, halting cyber-attacks in progress, coordinating legal systems, and providing assistance to developing countries. The workshop site is being updated with the papers and presentations made during the last two and a half days. The Chairman's report should also be available there shortly.

Dr. Steven Bryen  of Aurora Defense presented at our workshop that closed today a paper entitled A Collective Security Approach To Protecting The Global Critical Infrastructure. The paper makes a brief mention of Echelon and it was interesting to run across this article published on Cyrptome that recently appeared in the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet. It reports to be an interview with one of the architects of Echelon II.

Korea has (by far) the highest broadband penetration in the world with about 7.8 million households with broadband connectivity, representing 30% of Korea's 25 million Internet users (2001). Here in Seoul at our workshop, we've just had a very interesting presentation on the present status of Cyber-Crime and Cyber-terrorism in Korea and the counter measures that the Korean Cyber-Terror Response Center of the Korean National Policy Agency are taking. In 2001, they made 7,595 arrests for hacking, virus attacks, etc. Of those, 1,473 they classified as cyber-terrorism. In Korea, they have 651 members of the police force dedicated to cyber-crime activites. 232 police stations have 495 police officers tasked to deal with cyber-crime. Absolutely amazing numbers indicating that the government has no tolerance for this activity. Is this the price that will be paid when broadband is deployed? I guess all those "always-on" broadband connections are tempting targets for launching zombie attacks...

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, with the support of the Korean Administration is running a workshop on Creating Trust in Critical Network Infrastructures. Lots of thought-provoking papers and presentations are being given.