By: Wilson Chua
The ITU released its IDI (ICT Development Index) report on the occasion of the WTIS 2017 symposium held in Tunisia on November 14-16, 2017. The IDI report listed the worldwide ranking as follows:
Iceland moved up one rank from 2016 to overtake Korea this 2017. Switzerland and Denmark traded places in the 3rd and 4th place. Meanwhile Singapore rose 2 ranks to 18th but this was far from being in the magic top 10.
Some countries were understandably unhappy with these results. These countries are particularly concerned because major foreign direct investments are decided based on these ITU IDI rankings. China and India then highlighted the need to take their sizeable population into account.
One key finding shows an emerging ICT gap between developed and developing countries. As the graph below shows, developing countries are left behind when it comes to medium speed (2 to 10mbps) and high speed bandwidth access (> 10mbps)
The latest ITU data estimate that more than half of the world’s households (53.6 per cent) now have access to the Internet at home, compared with less than 20 per cent in 2005 and just over 30 per cent in 2010.
The ITU panel is not naming and shaming, but it reports the progress on the ground. Data is validated by the country validator. Artificial intelligence, Cloud Computing, IoT, Big Data were key technologies to watch. The report also shows increasing access to the internet using LTE technologies.
