NEWS RELEASE

ICT Authority to  host  9th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Meeting (WTIM 2011) of the International Telecommunication Union, ITU

Port Louis: The 9th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Meeting (WTIM, 2011) will be held at the Swami Vivekananda International Convention Centre from the 7th -9th December, 2011.

It will be opened by the Honourable Tassarajen Chedumbrum Pillay, Minister of Information and Communication Technology.

The meeting will be preceded from the 5-6th of December by an Expert Group on Telecommunication/ICT Indicators (EGTI) meeting which will also be held at the SVICC.

The WTIM   is being organized by the Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and hosted by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority  (ICTA).

Among topics to be addressed:
1.  Measuring broadband capacity, quality and speed.
2. Measuring ICT sector investment, revenue and value added
3. Revisions to the indicators on household ICT access and individual ICT usage.
4. Emerging issues such as e-waste.

During the conference ITU Handbook on infrastructure indicators will be launched.

The participants are officials responsible for ICT statistics in their respective countries and organizations, regulatory agencies and telecommunications operating companies.

Session one of the conference is entitled “Towards 2015-Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development.”

The partnership has developed a statistical framework to measure the targets of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which ranges from connecting villages, schools, health centres, government agencies and providing ICT to the people. The Partnership on measuring ICT for Development will present the latest progress on monitoring global development targets and will present a roadmap for making a final assessment report by 2015.

On the first day of the conference during the second session delegates will discuss the topic Measuring ICT infrastructure and Access: Indicators and   Definitions. During that session the Expert Group on Telecommunication/indicators (EGTI) will launch the new ITU Handbook, a comprehensive practical guidebook featuring more than 80 indicators.

During the third session of the first day, delegates will discuss the theme Measuring ICT infrastructure and access: broadband capacity. During the session, the results of an ITU study to measure the world’s technological communication capacity by quantitatively   assessing the world wide capacity of ICTs in terms of bandwidth over time and by focusing on a number of broadcasting and telecommunication technologies. Discussions will also centre on a number of new indicators that could be used to measure countries’ national core backbone infrastructure.

On the second day of the Meeting delegates will be discussing the themes related to measuring ICT infrastructure and access and the topic of measuring investment and revenue in the telecommunication/ICT economy.

On the third day of the Meeting the participants will discuss the issue related to measuring e-waste and the conference will end on the discussions related to household ICT surveys.

Some two hundred foreign delegates from over fifty countries and twenty international organizations and some fifteen delegates from Mauritius are attending the conference.  The Executive Director of ICTA, Dr Krishna Oolun will be the Chair of the 9th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Meeting. 

For comprehensive information about the 9th World Telecommunication Indicators Meeting, (WTIM 2011) go to: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/wtim11/index.html

30 November 2011