 Accessibility and inclusion were among the key issues discussed at a high-level meeting of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development at the Yale Club in New York this week, where leaders of government, UN officials and members of civil society and the private sector came together to talk about the state of broadband in 2013 and how to universalize access. Our message has never been more urgent than right now. All reports point in the same direction. We need accelerators and cross-cutting multipliers to achieve progress across all the millennium development goals. Broadband networks, the arteries of our digital economy, are today vital and indispensable to nations' economic competitiveness. So we hope that the UN Secretary General's high-level panel of eminent persons can take this message on board. More than 20 years after the global launch of the Internet, broadband access has made a tremendous difference in the advancements of education, economic development, access to urgent care and cultural exchange. But the high-powered group of industry executives and key policy engineers that met in New York this week acknowledge that more work is still to be done. It is one thing to have the infrastructure and the tools in place. It is another to use them in a profitable manner. We need organization, financing, support to turn nice ideas into reality. When world experts come to you, begging that at very low cost big things can be done, I really expect the industry to hear it. It's a lightning rod. Every time a lightning strikes, this industry takes it first. But I tell you, this industry also has a limit how much it can absorb. And when we have taken a decision that this particular industry, the broadband in particular, the future, mobile Internet, can empower people, can transform lives, then this needs to be seen as a goose which will lay golden eggs in the form of massive development of societies. And let's not, therefore, slaughter these goose just to get one big egg out of it. The MDGs should be a strong partnership to direct actions at the national, international levels. And they should be a shared responsibility. It is certain that the broadband can make a tremendous contribution towards their attainment. Marginalized groups, women and rural communities are still lagging behind when it comes to broadband access and the information stream that it brings. Recently, the commission's working group on broadband and women issued a report on how to enhance the inclusion of women and girls in the information society. Gender does matter and it is very important to address the digital gender gaps along with other gaps. Women having less opportunity to go to school and be literate, the lack of ICT skills, the lack of access to broadband, you are holding women and their families back. And I say women and their families because the report notes that women invest an average of 90%, 90% of their earnings back into their families and communities. So women doing well has a significant multiplier effect. If women were to be able to have easy access to affordable ICTs, then they can use ICTs in the same way that you use transports to get you to a point. Spearheading the quest for development through new technology and innovation in broadband are youth. The UN representative for youth, Ahmad Al-Hindawi, urged that policy has to be adapted to the needs of the youth. And further investment is needed to propel the largest group of youth the world has ever seen forward in the development of new ICT solutions. One of the most important investments we can make is securing access to broadband ICTs. Youth can act as both beneficiaries and full partners for wider and improved access with your support. In the developed countries today you have youth unemployment which is a real issue and through ICT those can be solved. But at the same time you have job creation capabilities also for youth in the developing world as well. Overcoming the obstacle of accessibility and affordability will create new intellectual and innovative empowerment for rural communities and marginalized groups. Public-private partnerships between government and broadband facilitators are expected to speed up the process of inclusion. To connect these societies with the mainstream of broadband, adapting existing technology to a variety of uses across all platforms is a requirement. A better model is one that presents broadband as an efficiently built and shared utility. We cannot just build technology onto learning. It must be integrated into learning. Empowerment doesn't come from technology. It comes from skills and opportunities to use them. It comes from trained teachers. It comes from open education resources. What we need to do is to make sure that we are providing more access to young people to information technologies, to internet, to broadband internet and make sure as well that it's available and it's affordable. Facilitating a global ICT community that includes minorities, women and disadvantaged groups was at the center of today's broadband meeting and speakers agreed that it takes continued dedication and investment to make technology accessible and affordable to all. This is Shari Naiman reporting from New York City for South South News.