 Spread of mobile telephones in the developing world is the story in technology in recent times. They have spread faster than broadcast media and devices such as radio and the television. What is their implication for human development? Do they improve food security? Do they contribute to increasing access to education? Do they contribute to increasing access to credit? These are of course open questions. About 15 years back, international development agencies often wrote reports and you would find sentences which said that half the human population has never made a phone call. Not anymore. These statements are no longer made. Also 15 years back, every international development agency in the world had at least one project aimed at bridging the digital divide. Not anymore. The very rapid spread of mobile telephones has changed all that. That's what we should really be looking at now. What does this spread mean for ordinary people and their development? We should really be talking about the dividend and less about the divide. The ITU is a very important source of statistics in all matters related to information and communication technologies, especially where developing countries are concerned. This is probably the only reliable source at that level. Here is a figure from the ITU. This is a graph that you can see. It shows trends all over the world. I mean, this is an aggregated trend. What you find here and all this trend is reported in terms of what we call tele-density. In other words, number of telephones per 100 inhabitants. What you find here is that the blue line on the top is that the tele-density increased in terms of number of mobile telephones from about 15 in 2001 to about 96 in 2013, which is a very, very rapid increase. You would all agree. But around the same time, what you find is that the number of fixed telephone lines represented here by green line did not change significantly at all. In fact, you could say there is practically no change in the number of fixed line telephones. A very important factor not represented in the graph but in the data is that African continent experienced again very high growth in the number of mobile telephones by almost 500% in a matter of about seven years. That's again a spectacular growth from my point of view. Tele-density thus has grown very rapidly, as we would all agree. One example is India, which had a tele-density of about below 10 in the year 2000, has a tele-density of close to 79 now. This is a very, very rapid increase. This trend is continuing all over the world and this aggregation is what we just saw. If you look at the ITU figure again, what you find is that the access to internet has also grown very rapidly, not as rapidly as the mobile phones grew but fairly rapidly. You find that in terms of tele-density type of parameters, it was below 10 in the year 2001. It's close to 40 now. Again a very, very substantial increase in global terms. There is another recent trend that we should be looking at. Here again you find that the same graph, you find that a number of people accessing internet using wireless broadband and this data is available only from 2007. You find that this number has grown from somewhat close to zero, nearly zero to almost 30 in a span of about six years, again representing very rapid growth, nearly as rapid as the growth of telephones. In other words, people are using mobile telephones to access internet as well. Now, Mary Meekers is a very well-known analyst, business analyst working with the investment firm KPCB. Mary Meekers' analysis published annually about internet trends is a highly regarded publication and it's widely cited as well. What you find here in this graph is that Mary Meekers' report is able to show that not only is wireless access to internet growing, it's growing extremely rapidly, in fact it's accelerating. That's the trend that you see in the red trend line that is represented on the graph. Going forward, what we find is that the mobile internet access, in other words, access to internet from mobile devices as opposed to access to internet from desktop PCs has been a very, very important parameter and what you find is that the number of access, the amount of access from mobile phones exceeds that from desktop PCs in China and you find which is a very large developing country and you find that this is the trend in developed countries such as Korea. In Korea, you find that the number of such queries coming from mobile devices is rapidly increasing and in fact has exceeded the number of queries coming from the PCs especially over the last about one and a half years. But this is also leading to a totally new phenomenon. The phenomenon is that the rise of tablets. The tablets arose relatively recently, they are mobile devices, they started to appear in the market in late 2006 and nearly 2007 and the iPhone, which was a far more popular device at the time, you find that iPhone's growth is overtaken by the growth of a tablet such as iPad. This is also a trend that you can see from the Meribemekers publication and what you find is that taking as a whole, if you look at this new graph, what you find is towards your right and top, you find that tablets are becoming more and more ubiquitous. In fact, they are preferred over traditional laptops and notebook computers. This trend is also accelerating. What these tend to show as a whole is the rising importance of mobile devices not only in voice communication, not only in data communication, but in standard computing. Even in offices, tablets are slowly penetrating and slowly taking over and of course at the level of consumer devices, tablets have become even more ubiquitous. We in the common wealth of learning have been able to source very good quality tablets that cost no more than 50 years dollars and can give lot of good work for the user. So these are trends that are going to be very, very influential in times to come. Now the question is, what does it all mean for human development? We have been talking to a large number of development actors. We have been talking to a large number of people who are engaged in development research. Many of them are very keen to deploy the power and potential of mobile voice communication, mobile data communication and mobile computing in general in support of human development. However, there is a gap. The technologies have a lot of techniques that they can roll off the shelf anytime very quickly in support of human development, but they are not aware of the requirements of the development researchers and activists, just as the activists are not aware of the advances in technology. So we believe this gap must be addressed in order for the movement to go forward with high momentum and this course we believe is a great opportunity. The other dimension that we should be really be looking at is this kind of rapid spread was made possible not only by advances in technology, but also by the existence of a supportive policy environment in practically every country. That policy environment continues. Now we have many important developments such as the universal service obligation funds that are available in over 60 or 65 countries. That now should be a way for technologies, policy makers and development actors to come together to rapidly design, develop and float new applications that ordinary people can make use of in advancing their own prosperity and human development.