Pakistan Slips 5 Points to 143rd Position in ITU’s ICT Development Index
Pakistan Slips 5 Points to 143rd Position in ITU’s ICT Development Index
Pakistan has dropped on the Information and Telecommunication Union (ITU) ranking for ICT Development Index from 138th position in 2010 to 143rd position in 2015 amongst the 167 nations, said a recently published report titled “Measuring the Information Society Report for 2015”.
According to the latest report, 3.2 billion people are now online globally, representing 43.4 percent of the world’s population, while mobile-cellular subscriptions have reached almost 7.1 billion worldwide, which means that over 95 percent of the global population has cellular coverage.
The ITU gauged 11 indicators under ICT access, use and skills to develop the index.
ITU’s ICT Development Index 2015 (Higher the index, better the development)
It further states that Pakistan ranking on IDI (ICT Development Index) value improved from 1.79 to 2.24 points.
According to the report, India dropped on the ranking from 125th position to 131st position, while Sri Lanka dropped from 113th to 114th position, however Bangladesh improved from 148th to 144th position during past five years.
Korea remained at number one followed by Denmark at second position.
Comparing Asian countries, the report showed that Pakistan ranked at 30th position on the list of 32 nations, only a little above Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
It further states that sharpest rise in the rankings within Asian group of countries came from Bhutan (up nine places) and Myanmar (up eight places), while significant falls were recorded by Vietnam (down eight places), India (down six places) and Pakistan (down five places).
ITU’s ICT Development Index for Asia Pacific Region
Prices of fixed broadband, however, are decreasing in Pakistan, showed the report’s data while analyzing ICT developments over the past five years.
“Prices have become relatively affordable and lie below five percent of GNI pc (gross national income per capita) in about half the countries in the region, including Indonesia, China, Thailand and Pakistan,” it said.
Having assessed the 2014 mobile broadband prices, the report said, “the cost of a prepaid handset-based mobile-broadband plan with a 500 MB (megabytes) monthly data allowance ranged from less than $2 in Pakistan and Bhutan to more than $40 in several countries, including Denmark, Cyprus, Israel and the United States.”
The report said pre-paid handset-based mobile broadband for 500 MB/month are below five percent.
Pakistan’s ranking was 59 in the world when it comes to the prices of pre-paid handset-based mobile broadband. However, it scored 115th rank in terms of post-paid mobile broadband prices.
It must be noted that above mentioned index uses data till December 31st, 2014 and while majority of internet uptake in Pakistan happened after this point, future rankings for Pakistan are likely to improve notably. However, it is clear that Pakistan failed badly for ICT developments during 2010-2014.
ITU’s complete report can be downloaded from here.
malikmuddser