World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2010: Monitoring the WSIS targets
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Type of work: Report
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e-Readiness | ICT Infrastructure | ICT4D | Information SocietyAbstract:
From the foreword:
The ninth edition of the World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report is being published at the half-way point between the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005 and the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. This gives us a unique opportunity for a mid-term review — so this report focuses on the WSIS targets, and shows us that while we have achieved much in some areas we still have far to go in others.
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As this report shows, tremendous progress has been made over the past decade, with close to five billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide at the end of 2010, and almost two billion people throughout the world now having access to the Internet.
But there is still a vast amount of work to be done. In particular, we need to bring affordable fast broadband access within reach of the great majority of the world’s people — noting today that three quarters of the world’s inhabitants still have no access to the Internet at all. So what we need is to see a rapid and equitable spread of broadband networks matching the extraordinary growth of mobile cellular networks over the past decade.
The key — as this report acknowledges — will be in recognizing that broadband networks deliver benefits right across society, and can quickly pay for themselves in terms of the savings gained through the more efficient provision of essential services such as healthcare, education, power, water, transportation and e-government.
Executive Summary
