“The World in 2013: ICT Facts and Figures,” produced by the ITU, also shows that despite a positive general trend where 96 per cent of the world has access to mobile phones, in the developing world, 90 per cent of the 1.1 billion households are still not able to surf the Internet.

“We have made the most extraordinary progress in the first 12 years of the new millennium, and yet we still have far to go,” the ITU Secretary-General, Hamadoun I. Touré, told government ministers gathered at the ongoing Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.

“Mobile broadband is clearly going to be a vital part of the solution, and we must continue to ‘mobilize’ to ensure that all the world’s people have affordable, equitable access to the Internet,” Touré said.

According to the report, household Internet access has grown fastest in Africa over the past four years, at an annual growth rate of 27 per cent.

If trends continue, ITU estimates that 2.7 billion people, or 39 per cent of the world’s population, will be using the Internet by the end of this year. However, the greater figures will be in the industrialized countries.

The falling cost of fixed-broadband services – 82 per cent lower over the past five years – allowed more households to install it at home. Europe has the least expensive broadband as measured by the gross national income (GNI) per capita, but connections remain expensive in developing countries and can rise above 50 per cent of GNI per capita, the report warns.

In addition to prices, the speed of broadband Internet widely ranges from star performers in the Republic of Korea, Japan and Bulgaria, among others, to countries in other parts of the world where fewer than 10 per cent of subscribers offer speeds of at least 2 Mbit/s. That is enough to download a three minute song in about 20 seconds.

In terms of men and women, the report broke down for the first time use by gender. Worldwide, 37 per cent of all women use the Internet, compared with 41 per cent of all men. The gender gap is more pronounced in the developing world – with 16 per cent fewer women than men online.

Earlier this week, the ITU released a report which showed that broadband connectivity has the potential to transform education by giving teachers and students greater access to learning resources and technologies.

Measuring the Information Society 2012, produced by the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU), says that developing countries now account for the “lion’s share” of market growth in the mobile sector, according to an ITU press release detailing the report.

The report also shows that the ICT sector has not only become a major contributor to economic growth, but is especially so in developing countries, where global exports of ICT goods accounted for 20 per cent of their merchandise trade in 2010, compared to 12 per cent world wide.

“While prices in developed economies have stabilized, those in developing countries continue to fall at double-digit rates,” ITU stated in a news release on the report.

But, ITU said, the digital divide – generally defined as the difference in levels of ICT access between developed and developing countries – remains significant.

Developed countries register average “connectivity” values that are twice that of their developing counterparts on the Geneva-based agency’s ICT Development Index (IDI), according to the ITU report, which adds that policy makers should pay “keen attention” to the plight of a group of so-called ‘Least Connected Countries’ that the index identifies as having the lowest connectivity rates.

“The past year has seen continued and almost universal growth in ICT uptake,” said Brahima Sanou, the Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau, which authors the annual report. “The surge in numbers of mobile-broadband subscriptions in developing countries has brought the Internet to a multitude of new users.”

She added, “Despite the downward trend, prices remain relatively high in many low-income countries. For mobile broadband to replicate the mobile-cellular miracle and bring more people from developing countries online, 3G network coverage has to be extended and prices have to go down even further.”

Commenting on the report, ITU’s Secretary-General, Hamadoun I. Touré, called it the “annual industry benchmark for technology development.” He said the agency’s reputation as a “wholly impartial and reliable source” renders it the “most comprehensive statistical and analytical report on the shape of ICT markets worldwide.”

The report shows that the Republic of Korea remained the world’s most advanced ICT economy as determined by the IDI, which ranks 155 countries according to their levels of ICT access, use and skills, and takes account of 2011 and 2010 scores.

The next four countries – Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland – were also unchanged from the year before, while the United Kingdom, which moved from 14th place in 2011 to ninth in 2012, was the only new arrival in the top ten.

European countries also filled eight of the top ten spots, with Japan, ranking eighth, as the only non-European country at that level besides top-placed Republic of Korea. All the top 30 were high-income countries, which, ITU said, underlined the “strong link between income and ICT progress.”

ITU noted the report’s findings also include that countries marking the most progress in terms of ICT development were mostly in the developing world. It cites “strong performers” as including Bahrain, Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia.

“Mobile-cellular subscriptions registered continuous double-digit growth in developing country markets, for a global total of six billion mobile subscriptions by end 2011,” ITU said, noting that China and India each account for around one billion subscriptions.

“Mobile broadband continues to be the ICT service displaying the sharpest growth rates,” ITU added. “Over the past year, growth in mobile-broadband services continued at 40 per cent globally and 78 per cent in developing countries. There are now twice as many mobile-broadband subscriptions as fixed-broadband subscriptions worldwide.”

The increase in developing world connectivity rates has taken place alongside a rise in the affordability of telecommunication and Internet services.

“The price of ICT services dropped by 30 per cent globally between 2008 and 2011, with the biggest decrease in fixed-broadband Internet services, where average prices have come down by 75 per cent,” ITU said.

Still, ITU highlighted that fixed-broadband services remained “too expensive” in most developing countries, explaining that the price of a basic, monthly fixed-broadband package represented more than 40 per cent of monthly gross national income per capita at the end of 2011, compared to 1.7 per cent in developed economies.

Co-organized by four UN agencies, the week-long forum is the world’s largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ community. It builds on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a UN process initiated in two phases, in 2003 and 2005.

“We can proudly say that the WSIS Forum is truly becoming a stakeholder-driven platform that displays our common desire and commitment to build a people-centric, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society,” said Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU), at the event’s opening.

The WSIS Forum aims to define strategies and tactics to help countries and organizations more effectively use ICTs to advance progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include eradicating hunger, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, all by 2015.

Among the topics on the agenda at the meeting are rural development, ICT infrastructure, cybersecurity, multilingualism, environmental sustainability, education, healthcare and innovation.

In his remarks, Mr. Touré noted that a particular area of focus is the challenge of sustainable development, and the role that ICTs can and must play in the process. The forum comes ahead of next month’s UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) that will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “I am confident that the results of discussions and the concrete recommendations of the WSIS Forum will become an important contribution to the Rio+20 process,” he said.

He added that the high-level of participation at the event, which is drawing more than 40 ministers and top officials from the private sector and civil society, is “a clear demonstration that ICTs continue to remain right at the top of country-level agendas – and it is our responsibility to ensure that they continue to stay there up to and beyond 2015.”

The opening ceremony of the forum also saw the awarding of WSIS Project Prizes to 18 winners from around the world, recognizing the success of their efforts in implementing development-oriented strategies that leverage the power of ICTs.

The WSIS Forum is co-organized by the ITU, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

The President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; the Chairperson of the Chinese company Huawei, Sun Yafang, and United States Oscar-winning actress and rights advocate Geena Davis, will be awarded the World Telecommunication and Information Society Award for their significant contribution to the ongoing digital revolution in ICTs, according to an announcement by International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The theme of this year’s World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, which falls on May 17, is “Women and Girls in ICT.”

In a news release, ITU’s Secretary-General, Hamadoun Touré, lauded the work of the three award-winners in promoting both the involvement of women in the ICT field, and in demonstrating the role ICTs can play in creating opportunities for them. “The ability of technology to empower women and girls in communities around the world is still largely untapped,” Touré said. “We are determined to work with partners across all sectors of society to promote the full potential of ICTs for the benefit of women and girls.”

Throughout her presidency, Ms. Fernández has sought to advance telecommunication development in her country and has also been a strong defender of human rights and gender equity, the ITU said, adding that by supporting a national telecommunication plan, Ms. Fernández “has taken far-reaching steps to connect the people of Argentina to ICTs.”

Since becoming Huawei’s Chairperson, Ms. Sun has turned the Chinese telecommunications company into a global enterprise that provides innovative technologies, ITU said. She is also actively involved in several corporate responsibility programmes and as a member of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development.

Ms. Davis is the founder of the non-governmental organization Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which works within the media and entertainment industry to engage, educate and influence the need for gender balance, reduce stereotypes and create a wide variety of female characters for entertainment targeting children less than 11 years of age. Ms. Davis is also ITU’s special envoy for women and girls in the field of ICT.

The awards ceremony takes place in Geneva on May 16, followed by a high-level panel discussion with the award-winners and other distinguished speakers.

During a high-level dialogue, leading figures in gender empowerment and technology debated and defined a roadmap for more successful approaches to attract school-age girls to the technology field, and agreed to work together to change attitudes that make this area of study unpopular among young women.

The debate brought together leading international figures and champions of gender empowerment including Melanne Verveer, United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues; Lakshmi Puri, Deputy Executive Director, UN Women; Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC); Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda; and Jasna Matić, State Secretary for Digital Agenda in Serbia.

It also featured lively discussion from industry leaders including Alethea Lodge-Clarke, Programme Manager of Public Private Partnerships for Microsoft; Monique Morrow, CTO Asia Pacific with Cisco Systems; Juliana Rotich, Ushahidi’s pioneering Executive Director; and Sarah Wynn-Williams, Manager of Global Public Policy for Facebook.

“Over the coming decade, there are expected to be two million more information and communications technology (ICT) jobs than there are professionals to fill them. This is an extraordinary opportunity for girls and young women – in a world where there are over 70 million unemployed young people,” said the ITU Secretary-General, Hamadoun Touré. He emphasized the need to cast aside outdated attitudes that are keeping young girls from considering technology as a career option. “ICT careers are not ‘too hard’ for girls. ICT careers are not unfeminine. And ICT careers are certainly not boring,” he added. “Encouraging girls into the technology industry will create a positive feedback look – in turn creating inspiring new role models for the next generation.”

The debate was one of many events organized in more than 70 countries around the world to mark Girls in ICT Day, which is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday in April. Many events extended invitations to teenage girls and university students to spend the day at the offices of ICT companies, government agencies or academic institutions and to meet with female role models working in the technology field, so they could obtain a better appreciation of what it is like to work in the ICT sector.

The event also featured very special guest Joanne O’ Riordan, one of only seven people in the world with Total Amelia, a congenital birth condition causing the absence of all four limbs. ITU flew Joanne to New York from her native Cork in Ireland to take part in the event, so that she could give her perspective on the vital role of accessible technology in personal empowerment. In an inspirational speech, the 16-year-old, who celebrated her birthday in NY just prior to the event, told the audience her motto in life had always been ‘no limbs, no limits’.

“I use technology in all aspects of my life . . .  I was just one year old when I first began to explore the use of technology with our old computer. I figured out how to use it by simply moving my ‘hand’ and chin at a faster speed. Today I can type 36 words a minute and for someone with no limbs, I think that’s an incredible achievement,” she said.

Girls in ICT website