World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2010

This report highlights the major achievements that have been accomplished in connecting people via mobile technologies. Today, mobile cellular networks already cover close to 90 per cent of the world population, and we expect coverage to reach 100 per cent by 2015. We are also confident that by 2015 more than half of the world population will be using a mobile telephone. At the same time, the report shows that, in a number of areas, substantial efforts need to be made to achieve the targets. Too many schools in developing countries continue to be deprived of access to the Internet, and three-quarters of people in the world are not yet online. Only a very small proportion of the information hosted by libraries and archives has been digitized, and even less is available online. The report also points to the persistent broadband divide, which policy-makers need to tackle urgently.