Few issues have consumed the recent attention of policymakers and politicians like the digital divide. Now, more than ever before, what ITU famously referred to as the missing link, or the communications gap, has taken on a significance that surpasses the capabilities of most organisation that have allied themselves with bridging this famous divide.

The majority of the world's inhabitants have been completely shut out of the digital revolution and half of them have yet to make their first telephone call. The question is: can the divide in internet access--be that in numbers of access paths or speeds--be bridged? While developed countries march ahead with information and communication technologies, developing countries will have to move even faster to catch up. The digital challenge is intensified by the pressure placed on developing countries by new trade and investment regimes.

A recent report published by the OECD using ITU data shows that at the current rate of growth in fixed and mobile connections per 100 inhabitants, it will take about 40 years for non-OECD countries to reach the level that OECD countries enjoyed in 1995, the year that the Internet took off. For the 61 poorest countries, it will take 250-300 years to reach this level!

The family of 54 nations making up the Commonwealth displays the digital divide at work. High penetration rates characterise the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, while at the lower end of the scale, the Pacific islands have barely managed to get a national Internet backbone up and running. (click here to see charts).

The ITU has long recognised the multiplier effect that telecommunications development has on the economy but ICTs, in their new manifestation--encompassing electronic media, and traditional telecommunications--have moved beyond influencing familiar econometrics like productivity and trade. They are also making their effect felt in areas such as health, education and governance.

Digital opportunities for all was the rallying cry at Genoa and other rendez-vous of the DotForce. The Genoa communiqué by the G8 leaders went so far as to call for a new action plan on how e-government can strengthen democracy and the rule of law by empowering citizens and making the provision of essential government services more efficient.

More significant than the divide then is the democratising influence that simple communications tools and basic Internet access are exerting at grassroots level. Growing access to Internet at cybercafes and telecentres serves to conscientise the population about their rights, and to recognise the violation of their rights. The Philippines demonstrated the awesome power that text messaging in the hands of the people can exert, in turning the fortunes of the mighty. Likewise, ICTs are a vehicle that can be applied to tele-education and tele-governance, raising the level of awareness at the grassroots. ICTs are displacing the traditional long queues for banking, paying bills, filling out forms and have the potential to bring citizens closer to their elected leaders.

Indeed, Commonwealth leader, Canada, has committed to 100% on-line access by citizens to government information and services by the year 2004, in its drive to become known around the world as the government most-connected to its citizens. It estimates that by using e-government, it can increase Canada's proportion of e-commerce by 100% over the next three years. Other Commonwealth countries are following suit in branding themselves as on-line nations.

South Africa for instance has leapt ahead of the game, with its IT Strategy Project which aims to generate new economic opportunities while fulfilling its vision of racial and social equity and political empowerment and improved public services.

The ITU was an active participant in the G8 Dot Force and one of our recommendations is that developing countries participating in the Genoa Action Plan be requested to develop, if they have not already done so, comprehensive national ICT policies and strategies required to meet their development goals. In addition, it has proposed that in recognition of the catalytic role that ICTs can play in attaining social and economic development goals, financing institutions and development agencies should assign a higher priority within their development programmes to the ICT sector. We also called for a special fund to address the particular infrastructure, human resources development and policy and regulatory needs of the least-developed countries.

Internally, we in the ITU's Development Bureau, have begun responding to the growing concern for national e-readiness by officially creating a unit called e-strategy. This new initiative extends ongoing initiatives under the EC-DC programme or e-enablement of small and medium enterprises in developing countries to governance, health and e-applications. Global Regulators' Exchange (G-REX), a closed online forum is a new offering of the ITU, where regulators from around the world can share experiences, best practice and trade secrets. G-REX already demonstrates e-governance in action.

In the discussion of the digital divide, it is easy to ignore that while ICTs are powerful engines for economic, cultural and social development, access to them is virtually impossible without the underlying infrastructure. Be that pipes in the ground or the people that build, manage and provision them, here is where the long-established expertise of the ITU in technical cooperation and standardisation marks it out as a front-runner in countering the digital challenge.