Inventing the future in international telecommunications - Mission Statement

UN Chronicle, March-May, 2003 by Yoshio Utsumi

More than a century has passed since the work of Guglielmo Marconi and Alexander Graham Bell created the era of modern communications. While their inventions spurred profound changes to the scientific, social and economic development of the past century, their inspiration touches at both the heart of humanity and the mission of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Marconi's vision was not just to overcome the hurdle of sending electrical pulses across the Atlantic. He said he hoped that the telegram would make the world a smaller and more peaceful place. Graham Bell's goal was even more personal--he wanted to overcome a human handicap: the deafness of his wife and that of his students.

As I enter my second term as Secretary-General of ITU--the world's oldest intergovernmental organization--I'm reluctant to predict what revolutionary change telecommunications will bring to this century. However, I am certain of one thing: information and communication technology (ICT) is at the core of the current evolution of the global information society.

Information has the power to dispel ignorance and empower those who are oppressed. It has the power to bind the global community and spread the common ideals of peace and tolerance, growth and development. While the basic needs of humankind have long been food, clothing and shelter, the time has come to add "information" to that list.

A concerted global effort is needed to eliminate the gap between rich and poor when it comes to access to information. Unfortunately, we still have many hurdles to overcome. The euphoria of the dot.com boom carried the world into uncharted waters, and at times we lost sight of the horizon. Too much eagerness to "jump on the electronic bandwagon" resulted in a mismatch between supply and demand, which led to telecommunication overcapacity in many areas of the developed world. In 2000 alone, the industry invested more than $200 billion worldwide. But the financial and social dividends have been far from optimal, because we were super-serving the rich few, and failing to provide basic services to the many.

Despite the abundance of telecommunication capacity, there is not even a basic telephone connection in many villages of the developing world, where demand continues to outstrip supply. The problem is clearly not one of shortage of resources but of distribution and the lack of a global policy perspective.

In the new information society, where information is the key to economic, social and cultural development, ITU must play a key role in helping our membership with policy development. This goes well beyond what the founders of the Union could have imagined in 1865 but, like Marconi and Bell, my objectives are on a more human scale.

I want to make certain that a farmer in a remote part of Africa or Asia can have instantaneous access to information on the global market, which directly impacts his life--information that will help him to improve his ability to choose the crops he grows, or to pick the day he takes his harvest to market. I want to ensure that the power of information and communication technologies can bring simple water purification techniques and training to villages, where infant mortality rates are still as high as the day when Marconi's first telegraph message crossed the Atlantic in 1901.

The need for ITU to focus on a global policy perspective does not mean I intend to turn my back on the telecommunications industry. Rather, it is within this industry that my hope lies. However, we must acknowledge that the broader goals of humanity, such as those expressed in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, will be much easier to achieve once developing countries benefit from the same ubiquity of advanced information and communication technologies as developed countries.

The telecommunication operators and manufacturers who have suffered most since the global industry downturn began in 2001 are those who have not invested outside the developed nations. The competition to reach the last 5 per cent or so of potential telecommunication users in the developed world is much more intense than for the 50 per cent who are still unserved in the developing world.

Despite the fact that activities based around the creation, processing and dissemination of information already account for more than 80 per cent of employment in the developed world, issues concerning ICTs are not yet high on the political agenda of many of our leaders. Wise politicians may already know how to use the media to win elections, but many do not yet know how to make the best use of ICTs to run the government or extend the reach of educational programmes or medical services.

For developing countries, the dawn of the information society poses the opportunity to leapfrog ahead, to be free of the constraints imposed by the distribution of natural resources or the terms of trade. ICTs can directly assist those countries emerging from a troubled history. However, increasing access to ICTs is not without risk to some political leaders, as it may give their citizens more power to control their economic and political destiny.