As the world economy is grapples with nagging discontent over the unequal distribution of wealth to a fortunate 1 percent, some telecom governmental bigwigs and industrial heavyweights gathering at the 2011 Telecom World in Geneva, Switzerland have contended to the monstrosity of the widening gap between of the haves and have-nots, and vowed to take this issue seriously during the three-day conference.
UN Agency International Telecommunication Union (ITU) secretary-general Dr Hamadoun I. Touré said superfast Internet connections and broadband would be among the key vehicles in the technological revolution.
"Broadband will revolutionize the lives of everyone, everywhere. It will help deliver radical improvements in healthcare, education, transportation, utility supplies and government services," Touré said Monday in the opening speech for the Broadband Leadership Summit, one of the programs at the conference.
Touré added that broadband would also help accelerate efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
However, he said, the risk ahead is "a world of broadband rich and broadband poor."
"We must therefore step up our efforts to make access to broadband networks and services equitable and affordable for all world’s people wherever they live and whatever their means," he asserted.
World No. 1 billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, the chairman of Grupo Carso, who also attends the conference, voiced a similar view.
The Mexican magnate said that people, rich and poor or those living in urban and rural areas, as well as businesses, big and small, should benefit from the use of fast Internet.
"We need to look for best practices worldwide [during the summit]," he said.
At least 250 world leaders ranging from heads of state and officials, city mayors, telco industry CEOs and technology gurus attend this year's first forum of the ITU Telecom World.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame whose video speech was run in the opening ceremony also highlighted issues of inequality.
"For a long time, many countries have been unable to effectively participate or contribute in the digital economy simply because of their limited access to broadband. It is our duty to build broadband infrastructure to meet the needs of our citizens," Kagame said.
"We need broadband to improve education and healthcare and to boost tomorrow's economy," he added.
ITU along with UNESCO has established last year the Broadband Commission for Digital Development.
ITU secretary-general Touré said the commission had met on Monday and had agreed to create measurable broadband targets covering in particular the issues of affordability and uptake.
"The affordability target sets a maximum percentage of monthly income as a target for broadband access; and the uptake targets set minimum desired thresholds for households with Internet access, and Internet penetration as a whole," Touré said.
"We will measure progress annually and publish country rankings to quantify and evaluate broadband progress around the globe," he added.
He asserted that all discussions should serve and focus on the main goal, which is to put broadband at the service of sustainable social and economic development.
"I'd like to see a world where we replicate the mobile miracle of the past decade for broadband, a world where individuals rich and poor can be connected to the global knowledge society, a world where what matters is human ingenuity, not simply where you were born, or how wealthy your parents were," he said.
Beside government institutions, some industry leaders taking part in the conference include Huawei Technologies Co., Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Intel, NTT Group, NTT DoCoMo, Qtel, RIM, Satorys, Swisscom, Telkom SA, Turk Telecom, TDIA, and ZTE.
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