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As indicated in “About
ITU-D and BDT” accessed from the
ITU-D Home Page,
the mission of the ITU-D is to support efforts towards realizing the
right of all inhabitants of the planet to communicate through access to
infrastructure and information and communication services.
When the
ITU was founded in 1865,
telecom services were out of reach for all but the wealthiest, were
initially limited to telegraphy and later voice, and were initially
restricted to fixed locations.
Technological advances
have made it possible
to reduce the costs, shorten the installation and deployment intervals,
and increase the capabilities of what can be offered to end users.
This has resulted in
telecommunications being affordable to a much larger proportion of
society, as well as the provision of a much broader range of services
including the freedom to be mobile. The
number of mobile subscribers surpassed the number of fixed subscribers
several years
ago due to the cost of mobile access having declined significantly
compared to that of fixed access, along with the great reduction in the
time required to provide mobile service vs. fixed service, especially in
underserved markets. As a consequence, as of Dec 2010, there are some
5.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, as well as about 1.268 fixed
access lines, with the vast majority of new subscriptions being mobile
as opposed to fixed.
The
GSM Association
states there are about 4.75 billion GSM subscriptions plus the
CDG
notes that there are some 695 million CDMA2000 subscribers. In addition,
the
CIA World Factbook
indicates there were some 1.268 billion fixed lines in 2008 and recent
trends indicate little or no growth in fixed access.
Despite some 80% of the
world’s population (about 6.884 billion
as of December 2010)
living in areas with mobile telecommunications coverage, it is currently
still too expensive to be economically accessible for some 40% of the
world’s people: there is an affordability barrier preventing about 3
billion of the world’s poorest people from gaining access to telecoms
and the advantages that come with it. While there has been a significant
number of the “unconnected” getting “connected” in the last few years,
there remains a large number of people who cannot yet afford what much
of the rest of the world increasingly takes for granted and increasingly
applies in improving their economic situation. Substantial efforts are
being made to address this. |
