 The United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development has just released its annual report which aims to take the pulse of broadband globally and track broadband availability and affordability worldwide. This unique snapshot is compiled by the International Telecommunication Union, the UN's specialized agency for information and communication technologies. We asked report author Philippa Biggs to outline this year's key findings. How are we getting closer to the commission's goal of broadband for all? If there's one headline coming out of this year's report, what would that top line message be? That's actually quite a tough question because this year's report is very rich and informative but I think what was interesting for me to see was some of the mixed messages we're starting to see emerging. There has been good progress in improving access to ICTs and the internet but we're also starting to see some early warning signs. For example, more than half the world's population are still offline and in terms of the rate of internet growth, the rate of expansion is starting to slow as networks are rolled out beyond the more densely populated urban areas. The gender digital divide is still proving stubbornly persistent with as many as 200 million more men online than women and also the rate of growth in online representation of languages is failing to keep up with the overall rate of internet usage, growth in internet usage. That means that obviously has implications for reaching new target audiences with new services. There are some mixed messages but there's certainly the possibility to read the research behind that. According to the report, there are now around three billion people online. Does that mean the so-called digital divide is now dead, dying or totally depussy? Contrary to the good news and noises we're hearing from some sources, I believe personally it's rather the contrary with only 3.2 billion online that still leaves some 4.2 billion people offline so these messages that we sometimes hear about everyone is connected and mobile is the answer. The digital divide is still very much with us, it's just evolving, we're seeing new divides emerging in terms of speed or functionality, capability, what you can do with that connection and those are also cause for concern, there's some issues there. According to the report, which technologies or combination of technologies will prove the most promising for connecting the next billion and the next 4 billion or the last billion? Does look as if mobile broadband or what we call the high speed 3G or 4G, they will certainly play a pivotal role in connecting the next billion, they offer the most immediate prospects for connecting people and ITU does a lot of work in that respect. We look forward to the World Radio Communication Conference this November 2015 to help underpin that expansion in mobile broadband. It's also important to remember that the fixed backhaul networks are also underpinning that vital growth, they're two flip sides to the same coin but there's definitely a lot of investment needed and it's not entirely clear always where that investment is coming from or when. Satellite also plays a very important role and even as recently as last year in Europe the then European Commissioner, Nellie Crows, she identified satellite as the means of connecting the last billion but certainly it looks if some combination of these technologies will be necessary and then of course we're seeing entirely new approaches emerging with drones or UAVs so it's certainly a very interesting time to be in the industry at the moment. The Commission has successfully advocated for countries to establish a national broadband plan, over 148 economies have one in place and another 7 are introducing one shortly but do these plans really make any difference, do they work? The first answer is some do, the report presents the latest analysis and research into what a good plan looks like and what it should cover in terms of monitoring and follow up and assigning responsibilities and we're seeing some pretty good examples in countries such as Brazil and Qatar and the Philippines that have proven effective in increasing both access to ICTs and broadband and usage so the good news is we have a much better idea of what a good plan looks like but of course it's important to remember that a plan is only one part of the answer to what is a very tough challenge and the operators and government and regulators really do have to engage in a national dialogue and work together to help roll out broadband. That's a pretty tough order by anyone's standards so operators need the support and understanding of regulators in that rather than punishment and confrontation. The other issue of course is the funding and also we're seeing that a lot of these plans are by now quite old. The Commission's research in 2013 found that the average lifetime was 7 years which is really rather too long in such a vast moving industry so it's very important to keep revisiting and updating the national broadband plan. What about diversity of languages on the net? Is progress on multilingualism positive or negative and why? Well this is really the content challenge of our times and certainly for regions with high linguistic diversity such as Africa, India, Southeast Asia there is evidence that not many of these languages are making it online or making the online transition and that is really a source of some concern if we're to engage properly with the unconnected part of the world's population. So there's some recent research by UNESCO suggesting that there's over 300 languages online but you need to differentiate between the internet users who are more linguistically diverse and internet content where the evidence suggests that it's still really the vast majority of internet content is online in a fairly limited number of languages. Another question is making existing services online available in more languages and we're seeing some progress here but by no means as optimal as one could have hoped Wikipedia seems to perform the best in terms of number of languages available online mainly due to its emphasis on used generated content but there's also been significant efforts by Facebook and Google and others to make their services available in many more languages so this is definitely a very important area and one to watch closely. Can broadband on its own drive development and advance the new sustainable development goals? We're seeing some evidence now that ICTs need to be combined with human factors to deliver real results. I would agree with that. This report provides plenty of examples of how broadband and ICTs more generally can be used to improve development outcomes and deliver real services that people really need. However I think it's very important not to lose sight of the fact that human creativity and human ingenuity and above all human motivation are needed that's what drives development. Sustainable solutions are only part of that answer and it's very important not to lose sight of the human element.