ITU TELECOM WORLD 2009 — Special report
Senator Stephen Conroy
Australia’s Minister of Broadband,
Communications and the Digital
Economy
Tarek Kamel
Egypt’s Minister of
Communications and Information
Technology
Open summit: ICT for economic growth
Highlights from the “Open summit on ICT for economic growth” focused on
some of the major broadband stimulus plans under way in a number of countries
to stimulate long-term economic growth and create new jobs. Panellists included
Australia’s Minister of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator
Stephen Conroy; Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology
Tarek Kamel; United States Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information,
National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), US Department
of Commerce, Lawrence E. Strickling; Chairman and Group CEO of Bharti Enterprises,
India, Sunil Bharti Mittal; CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks, Finland, Rajeev Suri;
Member of the Board and Vice Chairman of Fujitsu Ltd, Japan, Chiaki Ito; and Vice
President, Advanced Technology for Research in Motion Limited, Canada, Mark Pecen.
The session was moderated by Adrian Finighan, CNN anchor and correspondent in
the United Kingdom.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides a total of USD 7.2 billion
to fund projects that will expand access to, and adoption of, broadband services.
Mr Strickling explained that NTIA will use USD 4.7 billion of this funding for grants
to deploy broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas in the United
States, expand public computer centre capacity, and encourage sustainable adoption
of broadband services.
ITU predicts 4.6 billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2009
Lawrence E. Strickling
United States Assistant
Secretary for Communications
and Information, National
Telecommunications and
Information Administration, US
Department of Commerce
ITU’s latest statistics, issued at ITU TELECOM WORLD 2009, reveal rapid growth in
ICT in many world regions, with mobile technology acting as a key driver. Mobile
subscriptions are expected to reach 4.6 billion by the end of 2009, and mobile
broadband subscriptions to top 600 million, having overtaken fixed broadband
subscriptions in 2008. “The World in 2009: ICT facts and figures” is a new ITU
publication offering comprehensive data, forecasts and analysis of the global ICT
market. It shows that mobile technologies have a particularly important impact in
developing countries, with several of them launching IMT2000/3G networks and
services.
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ITU News  9 | 2009  November 2009
Open summit
Rajeev Suri
Australia’s “super-fast National Broadband Network” announced by the government in April 2009 is expected to support 25 000 jobs every year, on average, over
the life of the project (an estimated eight years). Describing the project as a publicprivate partnership, Senator Stephen Conroy said that it will cost AUS 43 billion and
will connect 90 per cent of all Australian homes, schools and workplaces with broadband services at speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s. It will use next-generation technologies
such as optical fibre, but also rely on advanced wireless and satellite technologies for
remote parts of rural Australia.
Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamel
noted that the Middle East and Africa have been least affected by the economic
downturn, with many countries still recording double-digit growth. He said that the
service industry was a good opportunity within ICT, and revealed that Egypt plans to
increase its presence as a centre of excellence and a destination for the outsourcing
and “offshoring” of services, in which business processes are transferred from one
country to another. He said that Egypt is already a favourite destination for this work,
“because we have all the elements for success: good geographic location — situated
at the centre of major cable routes — excellent multilingual skills, government incentives, business park facilities and a robust infrastructure among them.”
CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks,
Finland
Chiaki Ito
Member of the Board and Vice
Chairman of Fujitsu Ltd, Japan
Mark Pecen
Shutterstock
Vice President, Advanced
Technology for Research in
Motion Limited, Canada
Adrian Finighan
CNN, United Kingdom
ITU News  9 | 2009  November 2009
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