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ITU - Press Conference: Launch of Facts & Figures 2024
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Press Conferences , Edited News | ITU
ITU - Press Conference: Launch of Facts & Figures 2024
Speaker:
- Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau
Source: UNTV CH and ITU
Restrictions: NONE
Language: English/NATS
Dateline: 27 November 2024 Geneva, Switzerland
TRT: 01:45
Speakers:
- Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau
- Thierry Geiger, ITU Senior Economist and Head of the Data and Analytics Division
1. Wide shot. Exterior. United Nations Office at Geneva.
2. SOUNDBITE (English): Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau: “Globally, our 2024 estimates show that one-third of humanity still does not use the internet, and that accounts for 5.5 billion people who are online, an increase of 227 million people based on our revised estimates for the year 2023. An estimated 2.6 billion are estimated to be offline, down from revised estimate of 2.8 billion for the year 2023.”
3. Wide shot, press briefing room
4. SOUNDBITE (English): Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau: “We embrace new technologies as they come. But it is not only about technology, it is what technology can do for the people.”
5. Wide shot, briefing table
6. SOUNDBITE (English): Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau:“We should look at technology with a human face. What is it that we are doing with the technology that we are producing? It is not only about investing in technology, but making sure some of the technology could be personal technology, like my smartphone. And some technology could be communal to make sure that communities have access.”
7. Wide shot, press briefing room
8. SOUNDBITE (English): Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau: “We must intensify our efforts to connect the world, not to leave anyone behind. To address the barriers that I outlined, affordability being one of them, digital skills being another, and many other factors that I mentioned. We renew our commitment to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity so that everyone can access the Internet in optimal conditions, at an affordable cost, anytime, anywhere.”
9. Aerial. Exterior. International Telecommunication Union headquarter building. Geneva, Switzerland.
10. Animation. ITU Flag.
Storyline
Briefing reporters on the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) Facts and Figures 2024 report in Geneva on Wednesday, Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau, said: “We must intensify our efforts to connect the world in order not to leave anyone behind.”
ITU’s annual report on global connectivity found that an estimated 5.5 billion people are online in 2024, an increase of 227 million people based on revised estimates for 2023.
While an estimated 68 per cent of the global population is now online and all indicators tracked in the report show improvement, stubborn digital divides persist and about one-third of the world’s people remain offline.
The estimates featured in the report from ITU, the UN Agency for Digital Technologies, show that connectivity continues to increase worldwide but reveal the complexities of reaching communities in low-income countries.
Recognizing the urgent work that remains to connect the 2.6 billion people that are offline, Mr. Zavazava said: “We renew our commitment to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity so that everyone can access the Internet in optimal conditions, at an affordable cost, anytime, anywhere.”
Teleprompter
[Other language spoken]
Welcome to this press conference on IT US Annual Facts and Figures Report.
Facts and Figures 2024 provides the most current assessment of the state of global connectivity.
The report features a wide range of connectivity estimates for the world.
While it does not provide individual country level data, it does give estimates for IT regions, country income groups and other groupings on Internet use, mobile phone number ownership, mobile and fixed broadband subscriptions, affordability, digital skills, mobile networks and Internet traffic.
The report is now available online and the website that we will direct you to includes all of the report information and supporting material.
And we'll try to get that website to you in the chat as well so that you can follow along with us to present the report is the Director of IT, US Telecommunication Development Bureau, Cosmos, Lucky Son, Zava Zava, we have about 30 minutes with you today.
Also with us is Tieri Geiger, senior Economist and Head of IC TS Data and Analytics Department.
We'll start with opening remarks from the Director and then move to your questions.
[Other language spoken]
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be here.
I would like to welcome all the reporters here present and those who are on Zoom as introduced.
My name is Cosma Zawazawa, I'm an elected official of ITU, responsible for the development sector.
It is a pleasure to give you an overview of our report, our Facts and Figures.
Our 2024 edition of Facts and Figures shows that global Internet youth continues to rise, but disparities remain, especially in low income countries.
The diversity in our membership speaks for itself.
We have listed developed countries, we have landlord to developing countries, and we have smaller and developing states.
Each of those have got their own challenges and opportunities globally.
Our 2024 estimates show that 1/3 of humanity still does not use the Internet and that accounts for 5.5 billion people who are online, an increase of 227 million people based on our revised estimates For the year 2023, an estimated 2.6 billion are estimated to be offline, down from revised estimate of 2.8 billion for the year 2023.
Of these, 1.8 billion people live in rural areas, so we are concerned about the disparity between urban and the remote rural areas.
Universal connectivity remains a distant prospect in the list of developed countries and landlocked developing countries, where only 35 and 39% of the population are online respectively, while in small island developing states, 65% of the population is online.
In line with the global average.
This year's estimates show that the world is vulnerable, communities are cut off from online access, and that Internet use is linked to the level of development.
Our key findings are the following Affordability Affordability remains a major barrier.
People in the least developed countries is still dedicated disproportionality, large share of their budget to access the Internet and that's why you see the gap in terms of uptake.
There are many people, particularly those who are royal based, who cannot afford to pay for connectivity although they are under coverage.
Estimates show that in **** income countries, the cost of mobile broadband is .4% of the gross national income per capita, while in low income countries the cost of mobile broadband is 7.4 of the GNI per capita.
19 times more expensive affect the broadband subscription where one is available cost the equivalent of nearly 1/3 of the average person's income in a low income country.
And I should add that now in terms of trends, mobile broadband is trending.
So the uptake is quite **** and less, of course, in terms of fixed broadband.
LDC's listed developed countries and list landlord developing countries have 15 and 14% of their population respectively, beyond the reach of mobile broadband, and they are falling short of the targets 9C of the SDGS Sustainable Development Goal 9 to significantly increase access to the information and communication technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet.
In the list of countries, by the year 2020, that was the target.
Another factor is quality of access.
It is estimated that more than half of the oldest population is covered by a 5G mobile network, and we are in an era of artificial intelligence.
And of course, 5G is a critical because of its low latence.
However, distribution is very uneven and disparities between **** and low income countries persist.
84% of the population of **** income countries is already covered by 5G, compared with the just 4% in low income countries.
Where 5G is not available, 4G is a good alternative.
However, 4G only reaches about half of the population in low income countries where 3G remains an important technology for connecting to the Internet.
Another element which is of critical importance relates to digital skills.
Digital skills are essential for meaningful use, yet the data reveals significant skill gets gaps beyond the basic communication capabilities.
Even in **** income countries, limited digital skills sets constrained many individuals ability to fully benefit from online resources.
And this goes for the divide between the young, that is 15 to 25 or 24, whom in the UN language we call the youth, and the ageing.
The ageing are limited in their use of modern technologies and of course we work very hard to breathe that gap.
Lack of progress in bridging the urban rural divide is also another factor.
Globally, an estimated 83% of urban dwellers use the Internet in 2024, compared with the 48% of the population in rural areas.
Of the estimated 2.6 billion people offline in 2020, four 1.8 billion people live in rural areas.
It is important to note that the gap has almost been bridged in **** income countries, while the divide remains deep in low income countries.
We are also concerned, of course, about the issue of gender and the gender divide.
Although there are 189,000,000 men, more men than women using the Internet, the report found that the world has been moving towards gender parity except in the least developed countries.
And we know that the world is moving slowly towards the gender parity in Internet use.
An estimated 70% of men use the Internet worldwide in 2024, with 65% of women, and this varies from region to region.
When you look at the Caribbean, the small island developing states, they have reached parity and the CIS region has equally reached parity.
The other regions are making significant progress, but they are still lagging behind in the seeds group.
The gender parity score also decreased significantly.
From a figure slightly above 1, indicating that more than one that more women than men were using the Internet, it dropped to exactly one in a 2024, indicating perfect gender parity.
The seeds are also a notable positive exception to the strong correlation between gender parity and overall Internet use.
They have achieved the gender parity even through slightly less than 2/3 of the population who use the Internet.
Another factor relates to the youth.
Young people are more likely to use the Internet, but the gap is shrinking.
Worldwide, an estimated 79% of people aged between 15 and 24 use the Internet regularly.
Mobile phone ownership is another key factor.
Globally, 4 out of five people over the age of 10 on a mobile phone.
However, major differences exist between countries.
More than 95% of people over 10 years old on a mobile phone in **** income economies, compared to only 56% in low income countries.
And in most cases in low income countries they are using basic telephony and not a smartphone which prohibits them also or hinder them to access mobile broadband.
Globally, women are about 7% less likely to own a mobile phone than men.
Mobile phones are the most common gateway to the Internet, so the prevalence of mobile ownership can provide an indication of Internet use.
I want to move on to mobile broadband subscriptions.
The number of mobile broadband subscriptions is approaching that of mobile cellular subscriptions.
While gains are being made, Fix the Broadband remains a luxury for men.
For many, the penetration of Fix the Telephone Airlines continues its steady decline with an estimated 10 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in 2024.
And finally, let me talk about Internet traffic.
Growth in Internet traffic remains strong.
However, the average monthly mobile broadband traffic per subscription in **** income countries, which is 16.2 GB is about 8 times higher than in low income economies.
It's the level of two.
An average user in a **** income country generates more traffic in just four days than a user in a low income country who does that for the entire month.
So it's equivalent to about a four day work or traffic in a developed countries than in a in a developing countries or listed developed countries, landlocked A developing country and small and developing states.
In the listed developed countries, the average traffic per subscription for fixed and mobile broadband stood at merely 37 and 30% of the global average, respectively.
The smaller developing stand is is that's stand out.
The group includes not only Singapore, which has **** fixed broadband penetration, but also listed developed countries which rely mostly on mobile services and is above average fix the broadband traffic by subscription but below average broadband traffic.
I want to conclude by just bringing to attention the fact that of course we recently in 2023 concluded the any Doha, the programme of action for the least developed countries and they send out the discussions and negotiations was the issue of digital, making sure that everything, every sector is driven by digital and we as ITU are committed to that.
And of course in May this year we were in Andiga and Barbuda for the Small Island Developing States UN Conference.
And again, the role that is played by digital was clearly recognised and you can find many paragraphs in the declaration that point to the catalytic role of digital in socio economic development and of course particularly in driving the SDGS.
Let me give you just one last bit, a repetition on regional background.
In Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States and the Americas, between 87 and 92% of the population use Internet.
In the Arab States and Asia Pacific countries, 7066% respectively do so, and in line with the global average.
By contrast, we estimated that only 38% of the population in Africa use the Internet.
So our call for action is that we must intensify our Air Force to connect to the world, not to leave anyone behind, to address the barriers that I outlined, affordability being one of them, digital skills being another, and many other factors that I mentioned.
Within your commitment to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity so that everyone can access the Internet in optimal conditions.
It it an affordable cost anytime, anywhere.
The upcoming World Telecommunication Development Conference, which is going to be held from the 17th to the 20th of November next year in Baku, Azerbaijan.
We'll be addressing these issues and coming up with strategies on how we can help developing countries as well as developed countries to address their priorities using digital as a catalyst.
And with this, I ended my briefing.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you, Mr Director.
And this with this then we turn to your questions.
We'll go as is custom to questions that are in room 1st and then to those that are participating remotely.
We ask you that certainly if I fail to.
But in any event, if you can provide please your name and affiliation for the webcast transcript from those following from a distance.
So if there are any questions, please.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you for the briefing, Thank you for the opportunity.
My question is about the connectivity of Africa and not only but the people living in rurality in fact, because in the report we can see that 48% of these people are not connected at all.
And I wanted just to ask a question about starting, how do you think that this technology can close this gap between rurality and people living in the towns and in cities?
Is it something that you are thinking that can really change the world situation in that?
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much.
That's a very good question.
So let me tell you what we do at ITU.
We are also mandated to create an enabling environment so that the regulatory framework is enabling particularly for the private sector and industry to invest.
We also work with our regulators to make sure that at any time they are responsive because technology moves very fast and they have to make sure that the governments or the police side, legal side as well as regulator side, they are in tune keeping with the technological trends.
We don't want regulators to stifle innovation.
And of course you mentioned star links.
The good thing about ITU is that we are technology neutral.
Any technology is welcome as long as it is going to bridge the connectivity gap between the rural, urban, gender differences, etcetera, etcetera.
So any technology is welcome and we see opportunities.
There are many technologies that are emerging which we know will accelerate the connectivity agenda that we have, and it also supports sustainable development.
[Other language spoken]
Turning again to the floor, any questions?
[Other language spoken]
Young tongue from China Economic Daily.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you for the briefing.
This is Mr Liang from China Economic Daily.
One thing I take notice from this report is the startling inequality.
And AS as you would agree with me in saying that radio, radio connectivity is one of the most basic function where the ITU has started.
And even with something as basic as this, we have an inequality between continents, between age groups, between groups of people.
This startling how is there any lessons we're drawing from this or any experience we're drawing, whether from the perspective of this report in particular or the ITU in general that could be applied to some new technology like the AI or the quantum computing we so that we could make this inequality not happen again.
[Other language spoken]
This is the question.
Our journey is a long journey and along the way we embrace new technologies as they come, but it is not only about technology.
It is what technology can do for the people, the impact that we can make on the ground.
We engage with multi stakeholders to make sure that each stakeholder plays their part.
We believe that we will be able to bridge this gap through an assorted set of solutions.
One of them is innovation and entrepreneurship.
We strongly believe that we should be scaling up small and medium enterprises.
We should help startups so that they can innovate and help to connect also the world.
We have many mechanisms that we have.
We just returned from Malta where we had our Globe of Innovation Forum which was well attended and entrepreneurship and we see the hunger and the appetite that are the countries they have.
They get it and the good thing is that there is political will because we had over 27 ministers present participating in this discussion.
I think we should look at technology with a human face.
What is it that we are doing with the technology that we were producing?
It is not only about investing in technology but making sure some of the technology could be personal technology like my smartphone, and some technology could be communal to make sure that communities have access.
For example, we have got what we call the digital transformation centres where all the innovation happens and the public has a free passage to go to the digital transformation centre to have access to fast **** speed processing computers and there they can experiment, they can also do anything they want, for example if they want to access government services.
So we believe strongly that this is an important element.
It will probably it will take a little bit long to bridge 100% the gap, but we are getting there and we are seeing the figures are speaking for themselves.
Thank you please.
I'm from Guam in the China journalist and Mr Zava Zava, you just mentioned that the 4G and 5G technologies may not cover everyone.
As far as I know, many countries around the world have conducted research on 6G technology.
What kind of standards do you think the three 6G technology standards should be formulated to avoid the problems existing in the development of 4G or five and 5G technologies?
My colleague also so that you contribute to the discussion.
We, we know that there are a number of countries particularly in Europe that are switching off 3G because it's redundant, because 5G does what the 3G does and they are still maintaining of course 2G because of the voice element and emergency services that are provided.
I wanted to take for example, Africa.
Many people are still relying as our report indicates they are still relying on 3G-4G etcetera and playing catch up.
When we were earlier last year in India, the Prime Minister of India launched the 6G vision and I know many countries are embracing 6G some 5.5.
We needed to make sure that the spectrum issues are addressed because that is a critical element.
In the last year, towards the end of the year, we had our world radio conference where we're discussing spectrum issues and that's one element.
But the standards are at the end of everything that we do and that's where we have convergence and meeting of minds with the industry and they do shape also our our standards.
So they are critical elements that are related to standards.
But what we don't want is to end up with redundance.
We don't want to end up with interference.
And obviously it is important that all stakeholders sit.
And as you well know in terms of spectrum regions, they've got to negotiate to make sure that there is a balance and equitable in terms of even the orbit space, in terms of satellites, etcetera, etcetera.
But 6G is a reality.
6G is going to unlock a lot of things because of its little Latins.
And in terms of artificial intelligence, of course, it is required and we are waiting to make sure that all the world and there will be another divide because the least developed countries will be still stuck probably in a 3G or 4G.
Well, is that as already on 60G and if they give that to we may want to also wake on and make sure that we bridge.
Terry, do you want to say anything?
[Other language spoken]
Thank you for that.
With that, I think we've for the first, for the moment exhausted questions in the room and I'll turn to our reporters who are online and prompt if there are any questions for the few minutes that we have left.
[Other language spoken]
Nina actually popping up.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
You for taking my question, I just I wanted to come back on the issue of AI and quantum that was mentioned earlier.
If you could just say a little bit more about concerns that I mean these these technologies are developing at very **** speeds and that the the gaps that will that will exist that they will, you know, they might be very difficult to overcome because and the power that the people who have who use these technologies have will be, you know, much greater.
So if you could just say a little bit more about the concerns related to these technologies.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much.
That's a very good question.
Just to respond to you, I would like to say the first concern that we have, it has to do with the potential gap between the have and the have notes.
That's one thing because technology is moving very fast and less developed regions and countries will struggle to play catch up.
So we are trying to make sure that we have a level, a level playing field.
The second issue concerns what did that technology is potentially able to do, which may not be in keeping with, for example, we promote an initiative called AI for Good, artificial intelligence for good, Where we want artificial intelligence.
It will help us to reduce the number of deaths when disasters do strike, to help us for economic development, to help surgeons in the health sector, and to make sure that early warning systems are effective.
Now there are things like deep fake hallucinations, falsehoods, etcetera, etcetera.
We believe that industry as a good citizen should also be responsible on this journey as they innovate.
But secondly, we believe that regulatory frameworks and legal frameworks and the policy frameworks should be able to help industry in unleashing this kind of technology.
But we caution obviously that over regulation can stifle innovation and we don't want that to happen.
Another challenge that we see is the issue of digital skills.
As this technology is evolving, we have to work very hard to make sure that the populations understand how this technology operate and also not underutilize but optimise the deployment of this technology for good so that we can all take advantage of the applications and services that come with the emergence of these technologies.
So those are some of the elements.
I think the bottom line is that there are more benefits than threats coming out of these technologies and we have to work side by side with the private sector and industry to make sure that together in the member States, together we are coming up with technology.
And cybersecurity, particularly for artificial intelligence should also be at the centre.
And that's why we are doing a lot in making sure that we do cyber drills, addressing the challenges that come with the emergence of all these new technologies, including child Online Protection, so that we can self regard the young people who are mostly active online.
Thank you very much.
[Other language spoken]
Turning back again to our reporters online, we have time for one more question.
I don't see any online.
I don't see any in the room, but I do see an opportunity to thank our guests, the Director of IT, US Telecommunication Development Bureau, Cosmos, Lucky Son Zawazawa for joining us, Terry Geiger and reporters in the room and afar for your interest in IT US Facts and Figures, which is now online.
And we look forward to supporting any follow up inquiries that you might have via the press line at press info@itu.in T Thank you very much.