The 9th ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Meeting (WTIM), held in Mauritius from the 7 to 9 December 2011, focused on emerging issues related to ICT indicators such as new indicators to measure mobile broadband subscriptions and tariffs, and broadband speed and quality of service; measuring e-waste; and assessing current ICT access and usage trends through household ICT surveys.
Enrico Calandro from Research ICT Africa made a presentation on “Measuring the use of social media through household surveys”. In the Conclusions and Recommendations of the meeting, the assembly agreed that the development of new indicators through household surveys was necessary to reflect recent trends and the growth in new applications such as social media and mobile Internet. In the discussion on indicator definitions and measurements, Calandro suggested to the Expert Group on Telecommunications Indicator to expand the QoS indicators to include not only fixed-broadband but also mobile-broadband services, taking into account the African context where the majority of broadband connections are wireless.