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The Fifth World Telecommunication Development Conference of International Telecommunication Union got underway in Hyderabad with a resolve to push the world community for faster rolling out of broadband connectivity to bridge the digital divide between the developed and developing countries and achieve the millennium development goals of the United Nations.
A once-in-four-years meeting -- where officials, policy makers, regulators, industry representatives and other stakeholders get together to discuss the problems and challenges faced by the information technology and communications industry and telecommunications sector -- was being attended by more than 1,300 delegates from 147 countries.
Opening the 10-day-long conference at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hamadoun Toure, secretary general, ITU, said that while the developed world was marching ahead with the ever-increasing number of mobile, Internet and broadband users, the developing world needs a lot of catching to do.
He said that for the first time in the history of telecommunications, the number of basic landline telephones was going down but it was being more than compensated by the skyrocketting number of cell phones. "There are 36 million fewer landline phones than in early 2006," he said.
The conference also threw up many other mind-boggling numbers of the rapid and dramatic growth of the mobile phones and other advances of ICT.
The number of mobile phones in the world has touched 5 billion this year.
Mobile phone number has gone up by 2.5 billion during last four years and 2 billion of them have been added in the developing countries alone.
The number of Internet users in last four years has gone up by 777 million, 600 million of them in developing world.
There was no existence of Tweet four years ago but today 50 million tweets were being sent every day. Facebook was a small site but today it has 400 million members.
Mobile broadband users number has gone up from 71 million in 2006 to 670 million now. Fixed broadband users have more than doubled from 215 million to 527 million.
Yet, the developing countries were lagging behind in over all usage of new technology. Toure said, "Close to one-third people in developed world have access to Internet but four-fifths of the people in the developing world still not."
Fixed and mobile broadband penetration rates in developed world at the beginning of 2010 stood at 27% and 39%, but the same in the developing world was only 3.5% and 3.3%.
The agenda of the conference include the issues like bigger penetration of broadband networks for the effective delivery of services to the citizens, and tackling of the issues of socio-economic development.
"Information and communication technologies and in particular broadband network offer perhaps greatest opportunity we have ever had to make rapid and profound advance in global social and economic development," he said.
The Hyderabad Declaration or Action Plan to be adopted at the end of the conference will include recommendations to be presented before the world leaders' conference in September which will review the progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Toure said that to help the world leaders see the way Broadband can accelerate the achievement of the development goal, ITU and Unesco have launched the Broadband Commission for the digital development with President of Rwanda Paul Kagame and World's richest man and Mexican Telecom magnate Carlos Slim Helu as the co chairpersons.
"For the Millennium Development Goal summit in September we will have clear recommendations for the broadband development," he said.
Broadband will help in ensuring universal primary education, health and in mitigating the impact of global warming, he said.
The conference will also be focussing the attention on the issue of Cyber Security. Toure said that the ITU was busy preparing a framework of cooperation and a cyber treaty to ensure that no country gives shelter to the cyber criminals and terrorists.
India's Minister for Telecommunication A Raja was the chief guest. He said that one-third of the world's population was still struggling to get access to basic voice telephony. "I am confident that this conference would be able to take appropriate decision to bridge this divide."
Sami Al Bashir, director, telecommunication bureau, ITU, described India as role model for other developing countries. "India is a remarkable place for ITU to hold the World Telecommunication Development Conference, not least because it is one of the world's great ICT success stories but also because India has shown, in very concrete and dramatic terms, the power of ICTs to stimulate social and economic development."