Today in 1865, the first International Telegraph Convention was signed in Paris by the 20 founding members, and the International Telegraph Union (ITU) was established to facilitate subsequent amendments to this initial agreement.

Today, the ITU is the leading United Nations agency for information and communication technology issues, and its membership includes 193 Member States and more than 700 private-sector entities ans academic institutions. The ITU published recently a concrete list of indicators to monitor the 10 World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) targets, which range from connecting villages, schools, and health centers to developing online content and providing people with access to information technology. The ITU collects and posts detailed statistics on information and communications technologies worldwide. For example:

In 2013, there are almost as many mobile-cellular subscriptions as people in the world, with more than half in the Asia-Pacific region (3.5 billion out of 6.8 billion total subscriptions).

2.7 billion people–almost 40% of the world’s population–are online.

Mobile-broadband subscriptions have climbed from 268 million in 2007 to 2.1 billion in 2013. This reflects an average annual growth rate of 40%, making mobile broadband the most dynamic ICT market.