At the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) published an annual report titled State of Broadband 2012. The report aims to inform the 170 countries in the world on the benefits of broadband Internet.  The United Nations and each member country should be able to use it as a guideline in determining a global broadband expansion policy.

The report talks about the structure of broadband in the future. According to ITU, broadband in the future will be dependent more on mobile devices in real time. Aside from being faster, broadband will also has a wider social component as there will be more devices connected in the future.

One of the points reported by ITU in the report is that today, 32.5 percent of the world’s citizens are connected to the Internet. In 2015, the number is expected to increase to 60%. While among the first world countries, around 20.5 percent of the households have Internet connection. This number is targeted to reach 40 percent in 2015.

Another interesting thing reported by ITU is the spread of non-English languages on the Internet. Currently, English is used by 27% of Internet users, closely followed by Chinese languages which are used by 24% of Internet users. Both languages dominate, followed by Spanish (8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese (4%), Dutch (3%), Arabic (3%), France (3%), Russian (3%), Korean (3%) and other languages (18%).

As for the progress in the development of broadband networking technology, service and applications, ITU suggests several policy recommendations that can be taken. Among them are the exploration of new approaches in spectrum management, account of ICT’s regulation review and updates, stimulate the creation of local content with local language and increase request of broadband by the initiative of the government.

The full report of State of Broadband 2012 by ITU can be downloaded from this page.