Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.
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Cornered! The ITU's recurring dream: connect the world
Cornered! The ITU's recurring dream: connect the world | The ITU's recurring dream: connect the world |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Friday, 27 June 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 To achieve the Maitland goals, the ITU set up the Centre for Telecommunications Development which later became the Bureau for Telecommunications Development. Neither was very successful and the ITU's World Telecommunications Advisory Committee set up in 1992 resulted in the formation, in 1995, of WorldTel, a body designed to channel private equity into telecommunications projects in developing countries. It was hoped that with the support and encouragement of the ITU, investors would see WorldTel as a unique vehicle for accessing telecommunications markets in developing countries. That did not work. In 2002 I wrote: "The organisation seems to be dormant...The 'investments' page of its website lists just four investments: one each in Bangladesh, Mexico, Africa and Egypt." Those same four, and only those, are still there six years later! And Utsumi was quite frank about the ITU's failure. He told the ITU's 2002 World Telecommunications Development Conference in Istanbul: "My message today is that the telecommunications sector must take urgent steps to bring basic telecommunications to all the world's inhabitants. We must take a fresh look at our policies, and modify them to fast track our objectives. As we review our programmes and their implementation, we should do some honest introspection and ask ourselves, has the telecoms fraternity been working to bridge the digital divide, or is it unwittingly and systematically contributing to widening the divide?" However what the world's oldest international organisation has been unable to achieve is fast becoming reality thanks largely to technology and free markets. CONTINUED |
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