ICTP is working closely with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to provide developing countries with access to the new information and communication technologies (ICTs).

ICTs at ICTP

More than 20,000 people from 170 nations, including 50 heads of state, met in Tunis, Tunisia, from 16-18 November 2005 to participate in the second and final phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
"We reaffirm," WSIS representatives noted in the conference's communiqué, the Tunis Commitment, "our desire to build an information society that will allow people everywhere to create, access, utilise and share information and knowledge."
ICTP has worked closely with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), WSIS's lead organising agency, for more than a decade, as part of a larger effort to bring access to new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to developing countries, and especially to the world's poorest countries.
"Like digital information itself," says Sandro Radicella, head of ICTP's Aeronomy and Radiopropagation Laboratory (ARPL), "the partnership between ICTP and ITU took off in the 1990s. In 1997, we organised a joint workshop on the use of radio for digital communications and, one year later, we held a school on the same subject." The latter has become an annual event with its ninth edition scheduled for February 2006.
"In total," Radicella notes, "more than 1000 students have received training on how to efficiently build and then utilise low-cost radio wave technology for bringing email and the internet to universities and research institutes."
"We all know that electronic communications has become the preferred method of communication, particularly in universities and research institutions," says Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU's director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau (ITU-BDT).
"In fact, communications experts estimate that some 90 percent of all official information---in business, government and science---is now produced in an electronic format; yet 80 percent of the world's population remains wedded to print material," adds Touré. "In today's world, being disconnected from electronic information spells deep trouble for an entire society, but for modern-day scientists it marks a death note to their careers."
Touré visited ICTP in February 2004 to sign a memorandum of understanding with ICTP director K.R. Sreenivasan that called for greater collaboration between the two organisations (see "Dot Dash Digital," News from ICTP, Spring 2004, p. 2).
Since then, the two institutions have co-organised three training activities, including an advanced workshop for the use of wireless technology at universities and hospitals in rural areas, which was held on the ICTP campus in Trieste, and a regional training workshop on wireless technologies for countries in southeast Asia, which took place at the International Institute of Information Technology (I2IT) in Pune, India. An additional three workshops will take place in 2006 when the focus will be on Africa, the continent that faces the greatest shortfalls in meeting the challenges of the digital age.
At the WSIS in Tunis, Marco Zennaro, a consultant with ICTP who represented the Centre at the Summit, spoke before a group of participants in the exhibition hall on the final day of the event. Amid displays showcasing mouse-less computers, where fingers drag files from one folder to another, and high-tech gadgetry that enables information to be transmitted through a 'wired' handshake, Zennaro reaffirmed ICTP's commitment to bring the new information and communication technologies down-to-earth for those most in need.
"By training individuals to use off-the-shelf equipment---antennas, micro-transmitters, and radio links---and then providing them with access to free software to drive the flow of information," Zennaro notes, "we can lay the foundation for modern wireless communications in the most remote and poorest parts of the world." Such efforts, which have already borne fruit, will help the WSIS achieve its noble goal of allowing people everywhere to "create, access, utilise and share" knowledge.
And that, in turn, will enable the global age of information to become truly global in its reach and impact.

For more on ICTP's wireless research and training activities, see http://wireless.ictp.it.

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