Broadband: A Catalyst for Economic Growth, Social Inclusion, and Innovation

Broadband plays a pivotal role in facilitating development across three key pillars. Firstly, it serves as an enabler of economic activity, value creation, and industry transformation. Secondly, it promotes social inclusion and equality by democratizing education, improving accessibility to learning, facilitating upskilling, and enhancing government-citizen interaction. Lastly, broadband acts as a facilitator of breakthrough innovations, forming the foundation of big data and other technological advancements witnessed in the last 10-15 years.

The World Broadband Alliance (WBBA) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) play a crucial role in convening multi-stakeholder dialogues to address the bottlenecks preventing broadband from reaching an additional 2.6 billion people still offline. The WBBA, being a relatively young institution, is eager to partner with the WEF to realize their shared vision. This partnership will focus on addressing challenges and fostering collaboration to bring broadband to everyone.