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World Information Society Report 2006 Print E-mail
Written by Divakar Goswami   
Thursday, 13 July 2006

The ITU released the World Information Society Report for 2006 earlier this month. It features a new tool and index, the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), that evaluates the opportunity, infrastructure and utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for 180 economies worldwide.

The index allows countries to compare themselves with their peers and also to track whether their ICT sector performance is going up or down by year. The DOI is a good tool for tracking a country's progress in bridging the digital divide over time.

In the context of the WSIS, the ITU has undertaken an initiative to identify 10 major goals that it wants to see the world reach by 2015 in the context of ICTs and telecoms. These include: connecting all villages with ICTs, connecting all education institutions to the internet, ensuring all people have access to TV and radio services etc. But in order to track the progress on meeting these goals it is necessary to develop indicators and collect data for them. The Digital Opportunity Index is a contribution to this.

The DOI is a set of 11 separate indicators brought together to form a greater composite index. They are structured around three broad areas:

a) what opportunities individuals in a country have to use ICTs;

  1. Percentage of population covered by mobile cellular telephony
  2. Mobile cellular tariffs as a percentage of per capita income
  3. Internet access tariffs as a percentage of per capita income

b) measures of infrastructure such as penetration rates for both individuals and for households;

  1. Proportion of households with a fixed line telephone
  2. Mobile cellular subscribers per 100 inhabitants
  3. Proportion of households with Internet access at home
  4. Mobile Internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants
  5. Proportion of households with a computer

c) levels of utilization and access to the Internet and broadband.

  1. Internet users per 100 inhabitants
  2. Ratio of Fixed Broadband Internet subscribers to total Internet subscribers
  3. Ratio of Mobile Broadband Internet subscribers to mobile Internet subscribers

Downloaded the report from the ITU website.