ITU Telecom World 2009 In Review Over the last two decades, the Internet has grown dramatically. According to ITU statistics, there are some 1.8 billion Internet users worldwide, or around a quarter of the world’s population, with the largest share in the Asia-Pacific region. Meanwhile, broadband and convergence are blurring the boundaries between infrastructure, applications and content. This, several countries said, is posing new policy and regulatory challenges. The broadband plans and proj-ects highlighted during the meeting highlight the importance of this technology for socio-economic development. On Internet governance, Saudi Arabia stressed the need to get to “the heart of the matter”. ITU has made many services available around the world through the management of the radio-frequency spectrum, and so “ITU should be more than capable of carrying out Internet governance,” Saudi Arabia stated. Egypt invited countries to take part in the fourth Internet Governance Forum in Sharm El Sheikh in November 2009. The crux of today’s Internet governance debate is resource management, the management of top-level domains and allocation of addresses. Developing countries feel they are under represented in current governance mechanisms, and that international governance frameworks should reflect new market reali-ties. Meanwhile, cybercriminals are exploiting online vulnerabilities and threatening the reliability, stability and security of the Internet. In some countries, new leg-islation on personal data protection is ready to be presented to national parlia-ments. The aim is to provide further assurance in the collection, processing and storage of personal data transmitted over electronic networks. In others, laws on cybersecurity are being finalized in line with national ICT policies. Countries at the meeting were unanimous in saying that cybercrime is “a global threat that requires global attention and a global solution”. Indonesia empha-sized that cybersecurity has become a prime issue for almost every ITU Mem-ber State, so this must be made a first priority in future ITU programmes. 31 VVIPS and Ministerial Insight