The quality of an economy's infrastructure, including power and communications, is an important element in investment decisions for both domestic and foreign investors. Government effort alone is not enough to meet the need for investments in modern infrastructure; public-private partnerships, especially those involving local providers and financiers, are critical for lowering costs and delivering value for money. In telecommunications, competition in the marketplace, along with sound regulation, is lowering costs, improving quality, and easing access to services around the globe. Today's smartphones and tablets have computer power equivalent to that of yesterday's computers and provide a similar range of functions. Device convergence is thus rendering the conventional definition obsolete.

Comparable statistics on access, use, quality, and affordability of ICT are needed to formulate growth-enabling policies for the sector and to monitor and evaluate the sector's impact on development. Although basic access data are available for many countries, in most developing countries little is known about who uses ICT; what they are used for (school, work, business, research, government); and how they affect people and businesses. The global Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development is helping to set standards, harmonize information and communications technology statistics, and build statistical capacity in developing countries. However, despite significant improvements in the developing world, the gap between the ICT haves and have-nots remains.

Access to telecommunication services rose on an unprecedented scale over the past two decades. This growth was driven primarily by wireless technologies and liberalization of telecommunications markets, which have enabled faster and less costly network rollout. Mobile communications have a particularly important impact in rural areas. The mobility, ease of use, flexible deployment, and relatively low and declining rollout costs of wireless technologies enable them to reach rural populations with low levels of income and literacy. The next billion mobile subscribers will consist mainly of the rural poor. Access is the key to delivering telecommunications services to people. If the service is not affordable to most people, goals of universal usage will not be met.

Over the past decade new financing and technology, along with privatization and market liberalization, have spurred dramatic growth in telecommunications in many countries. With the rapid development of mobile telephony and the global expansion of the Internet, information and communication technologies are increasingly recognized as essential tools of development, contributing to global integration and enhancing public sector effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency.
International Internet bandwidth (bits per second per Internet user)
Data are collected by national statistics offices through household surveys. Because survey questions and definitions differ, the estimates may not be strictly comparable across countries.

Discrepancies between global and national figures may arise when countries use a different definition than the one used by ITU. Discrepancies may also arise in cases where the end of a fiscal year differs from that used by ITU, which is end of December of every year. A number of countries have fiscal years that end in March or June of every year.
International Internet bandwidth refers to the total used capacity of international Internet bandwidth, in bits per second per Internet user. Used international Internet bandwidth refers to the average traffic load (expressed in Mbit/s) of international fiber-optic cables and radio links for carrying Internet traffic. The average should be calculated over the 12-month period of the reference year, and should take into consideration the traffic of all international Internet links. If the traffic is asymmetric (i.e. more incoming (downlink) than outgoing (uplink) traffic), then the average incoming (downlink) traffic load should be provided. The combined average traffic load of different international Internet links can be reported as the addition of the average traffic load of each link.
International Internet bandwidth refers to the total used capacity of international Internet bandwidth, in megabits per second (Mbit/s). It is measured as the sum of used capacity of all Internet exchanges (locations where Internet traffic is exchanged) offering international bandwidth. If capacity is asymmetric (i.e. more incoming (downlink) than outgoing (uplink) capacity), then the incoming (downlink) capacity should be provided.

International Internet bandwidth per Internet user is obtained by dividing the amount of bandwidth (in bits/second) by the total number of Internet users.