The first breakout group discussed both the idea of creating a holistic approach to measuring impact from Internet investment and developing a holistic set of messages around improving people’s lives.

The group’s starting point is that while several studies have asserted a connection between increased Internet penetration and growth in the GDP, these are seen as lacking sufficient detail as to enable implementation. The fact that connectivity is an enabler of at least 15 or the 17 SDGs contributes to the uncertainty. It is not clear, for example, whether a newly-connected society’s benefits accrued through improvements in trade and finance, or through improved health or educational outcomes.

This makes it difficult to predict with investment-level certainty that a connectivity project, plus the associated ICT endeavors on the ground, actually will improve lives. The spectacular success of m-Pesa in Kenya has not been replicated elsewhere, just as microloans have succeeded in some environments, but not others.

Some countries that have succeeded in creating energetic, focused programs to expand Internet connectivity include Costa Rica, Kenya, Rwanda, Thailand and Malaysia. There are other factors involved: Costa Rica by attracting private factories making and packaging integrated circuits had instilled broad computer literacy into the country at many levels, creating fertile ground for broadband. Thailand and Malaysia, similarly, have long been the sites of assemblers of storage disks and other electronics, so many developed ICT skills which formed a base for using the Internet to further build out capability.

The group discussed the challenges of including connectivity in major infrastructure projects – many emerging economies are looking at large-scale infrastructure projects – water, power, roads, etc. Each of these could be easily expanded to add a broadband infrastructure component, we recommend IEEE work with the ministries in each country and MDB’s to look for such opportunities to increase synergy and produce results across engineering silos.

ITU can play a role in driving dialog to measure meaningfully in ways that can be compared: Private sector: Technology community and NGO’s and industry, creating categories that allow UN SDG and World Bank data to create a big picture we can all see.

Ways to ease the problems that the group discussed included:

• Using the Internet itself to create live dashboards: there is no particular need to stick with one-year-long cycles for reports on projects, when the Internet itself should enable live data fields

• Find effective and plausible means to include connectivity components in all large infrastructure projects, while complying with local political realities.

• Harmonization of requirements – some organizations may prefer to only count dedicated connections within the profiles of the 3GPP roadmap: are only connections at the speeds of 3G or higher worth noting? 

• Policies should be harmonized to support expanding coverage; this will likely include harmonizing definitions (e.g. speeds, access to devices, etc.), and creating economic benchmarks (example for wholesale costs) and business definitions (neutrality, etc.)

• Leverage the lessons of similar countries that have succeeded.

• Create a target for funding – example, doubling the funding enabling connectivity

• We need in all cases to enable recipient countries to fully understand the total costs of infrastructure and plausible economic returns – data need to be credible, technically accurate and fresh.