Via Clayton Wright, here are two excerpts from Measuring the Information Society [254 page PDF], produced by the International Telecommunication Union.
1. From the Forward by Brahima Sanou, Director, Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) of the International Telecommunication Union:
"Over 250 million people came online over the last year, and almost 40 per cent of the world’s population will be using the Internet by end 2013. Mobile technology and services continue to be the key driver of the information society, and the number of mobilebroadband subscriptions is close to 2 billion. Mobile-broadband networks are allowing more people to connect to highspeed networks and benefit from a growing number of applications and services.
While both fixed- and mobile-broadband speeds continue to increase, the price of services is falling and ICTs are becoming more affordable: in the space of four years, fixed-broadband prices have dropped by an impressive 82 per cent. At the same time, the report also shows that ICT uptake remains limited in many developing countries, and particularly in the world’s least connected countries (LCCs) – a group of 39 countries (home to 2.4 billion people) with particularly low levels of ICT development. In this group of countries, ICTs can become key enablers for achieving international and national development goals and have the greatest development impact, and more policy attention needs to be directed towards them.
Young people all over the world are the most active users of ICTs. For the first time, a model has been developed to estimate the number of digital natives - the young people with solid ICT experience who are drivers of the information society. While 30 per cent of the youth population are digital natives today, the report shows that within the next five years, the digital native population in the developing world is expected to double."
2. From the Introduction:
"Recent trends in ICT developments As more and more people join the global information society and high-speed communication networks become an indispensable infrastructure, the tracking and measurement of developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) remain as relevant as ever. According to ITU estimates, there will be 6.8 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions by the end of 2013 – almost as many as there are people on the planet.
While the ubiquitous availability of mobile-telephone services is undeniable, with close to 100 per cent of the population covered by a mobile signal, not everyone has a mobile phone. From a measurement point of view, the ongoing challenge thus remains to identify those who are still left without access to ICTs. By end 2013, there will be an estimated 2.7 billion people using the Internet worldwide. In other words, there are still 4.4 billion people who are not yet online. Priority attention needs to be given to the unconnected, and action needs to be taken to improve the accessibility and affordability of broadband Internet services everywhere in order to usher in an inclusive information society. Over the past year, ICT deployment and uptake have continued to grow worldwide (Chart 1.1).
While growth in mobile-cellular penetration is flattening, reaching 96 per cent by end 2013, mobile broadband continues to grow strongly, on average by around 40 per cent annually between 2010 and 2013. Fixed-broadband uptake, on the other hand, is growing more slowly – at around 10 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) – albeit steadily, across both developing and developed regions. Reflecting the strong growth in mobile Internet uptake, growth in household access to the Internet has also accelerated over the past three years, mainly in the developing world, and will reach a penetration rate of over 40 per cent globally by end 2013. As a comparison, this figure corresponds to about half the proportion of households worldwide that have a TV (almost 80 per cent penetration in 2012: see below and Chapter 5)."
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