The telecommunications industry celebrates World Telecommunication Day today, to commemorate the birth of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on 17 May 1865.
This year, the day has the theme: ICTs: Leading the way to sustainable development.
In a statement issued to mark the occasion, UN secretary general Kofi Annan said: "It was 160 years ago that Samuel Morse used a simple series of dots and dashes to send the first message by telegraph - ushering in the dawn of the telecommunications age. Today, many people could not imagine daily life without the use of increasingly sophisticated information and communication technologies (ICTs), from television and radio to the mobile telephone and the Internet. Yet for millions of people in the world`s poorest countries, there remains a 'digital divide` excluding them from the benefits of ICTs.
"The theme of this year`s observance of World Telecommunication Day reminds us that ICTs serve as crucial tools for achieving economic progress. Affordable technologies, in the hands of local communities, can be effective engines of change, both social and material. Access to information and technological know-how is essential if the world is to defeat hunger, protect the environment and achieve the other Millennium Development Goals agreed by heads of state and government at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000," he said.
Echoing the message, MTN group executive of corporate affairs, Yvonne Muthien says: "MTN fully supports the theme put forward by the ITU for World Telecommunication Day 2004. ICT is widely recognised as the backbone of economic growth for every country in the new millennium and mobile communications is rapidly becoming the most effective means of providing African communities with wider access to it.
"By the end of last year, the mobile market in Africa had attracted 51.8 million subscribers and mobile penetration had reached 6.2%."
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