By the Numbers - A Researcher's Bonanza of ICT Policy-Level Information

F or the reader who uses technology numbers all day, the topic of information and communication technology (ICT) rankings and performance indices might seem a bit over the top. Yet, many might not be aware of the amazing variety of detailed, high-quality ICT measurements and analyses — especially telecom-related statistics, charts, and graphs — available. These measurements come in many forms: ICT aggregates for cities, states, nations, and regions; user-behavior trend analysis; Internet-penetration comparisons; download and upload speeds; quality of service; government telecom tariffs; and so on. Many are in the public domain and available at no cost, although others are proprietary, such as TeleGeography (www.telegeography.com), and offer fee-based services. Here, I'll cover some of those that are available at no cost. For international telecom statistical summaries, the mother lode is the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), part of the UN and headquartered in Geneva (www.itu.int/ITU-D/ ict). ITU's annual brief summary of global tele-com policy issues always offers some insights. In fact, the 2010 version of The World in 2010 — ICT Facts and Figures includes several fascinating statistics. 1 For example, • roughly 82 percent of the 5.5 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide still use 2G connections; • short-message service (SMS) calls — the data application with the highest use globally — tripled from 2007 to 2010 to an annual total of 6.1 trillion, generating revenues of US$812,000 per minute; and • the developing world's fixed (wired) broad-band connections rose to 45 percent of the global total by the end of 2010. But the ITU site offers far more than zingers. It has a 2009 database consisting of more than 100 telecom/ICT indicators — such as population, gross domestic product per capita, fixed telephone lines, mobile cellular subscriptions, fixed Internet subscriptions, fixed broadband subscriptions , ratio of mobile cellular subscriptions to fixed telephone lines, and so on — for 230 countries (www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/index.html). Another popular ITU report is Measuring the Information Society 2010. 2 It provides annual updates on two aggregate measures that are useful in public policy analysis. The first is the ICT Development Index (IDI), a composite of 11 variables — such as fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants, international Internet bandwidth per Internet user, proportion of households with a computer and with Internet access, adult literacy rate, Internet users per 100 inhabitants, and more — for 159 countries. The IDI measures four levels: evolution over time, progress in …