The report, which is the first produced by the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development, evaluates the roll-out of broadband around the world and tracks progress on the affordability of this service across countries.
“Broadband networks and services are transforming our way of life. The Broadband Commission is committed to ensuring that the benefits of broadband are available to all,” said the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Hamadoun Touré.
The State of Broadband 2012: Achieving Digital Inclusion for All was released yesterday at the sixth meeting of the Commission in New York, and was welcomed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who called broadband a “transformative technology that has the potential to spark advances across all three pillars of sustainable development: economic prosperity, social inclusion and environmental sustainability.”

The report notes a strong linguistic shift taking place online and predicts that if current growth rates continue, the number of Internet users accessing the web, predominantly in Chinese, will overtake English language users by 2015.