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Measuring the Information Society Report

Measuring the Information Society Report 2012

For the fourth consecutive year, this report presents two authoritative benchmarking tools to monitor information society developments worldwide. The ICT Development Index (IDI) ranks 155 countries’ performance with regard to information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and uptake. The ICT Price Basket (IPB) is a unique metric that tracks and compares the cost and affordability of ICT services in more than 160 countries globally. Both the IDI and the IPB combined are powerful measures for benchmarking and explaining differences among countries and within regions when it comes to ICT developments. This year’s edition of the report also features new data and analyses on revenue and investment in the ICT sector and proposes a new methodology to measure the world’s telecommunication capacity.

Download the free publication (pdf format) (excluding Annex 4*) or order the full report
Executive summary: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Russian (pdf format)
Press release in Arabic (pdf format), Chinese (pdf format), English, French, Spanish, Russian (pdf format)
Presentation (pdf format) - Key highlights (pdf format)

*Annex 4 features the statistical tables of prices used to compute the ICT Price Basket. It includes detailed price data for 161 countries broken down by cost of fixed- telephone, mobile-cellular and fixed-broadband services, for the year 2011.

Key findings of the MIS: ICT Development Index (IDI)

The Republic of Korea tops the IDI 2011, followed by Sweden, for the second consecutive year. Download the full IDI ranking.
There are large differences between developed and developing countries, with IDI values on average twice as high in the former compared with the latter.
The most dynamic performers are primarily from the developing world, and include countries from all regions.

ICT Price Basket (IPB)

The affordability of ICT services varies considerably with IPB values ranging from less than 1 per cent to more than 60 % of GNI p.c. \
By 2011, almost half of all developing countries included in the IPB had achieved a fixed-broadband sub-basket value of less than 5 % of GNI p.c., a target set by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development.
The price of ICT services has dropped on average by 30 % between 2008 and 2011.

Revenue and Investment in Telecommunications

In terms of revenues, 9 out of the top 20 telecommunication markets are developing countries.
Since 2007 telecommunications investment has declined in developed countries and increased in developing countries.
Mobile revenues per subscription were higher in developed than in developing countries, with values of above USD 20 per month for the former and below USD 10 for the latter.

Communication Capacity

The share of fixed Internet was more than seven times larger in terms of capacity than in terms of subscriptions.
There has been a shift away from voice-based telephony to (fixed and mobile) data services as the major contributor of global subscribed capacity in telecommunications.

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