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The UAE supports the least developed countries in the region to help them move to IPv6, the sixth revision of the Internet Protocol, Director-General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, Hamad Al Mansouri said.
While meeting Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Al Mansouri said that the annual report of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development in 2016, shows that there are 48 nations among the least developed, according to the United Nations.
These countries have made progress in this area and achieved the objective of the commission regarding the sustainable development of Internet service delivery at the end of this year, he added.
Fifteen percent of the population in the least developed countries have access to the Internet, Al Mansouri stated.
The report of the broadband commission for sustainable development in 2016 and the role of large-scale communication technologies to support growth-oriented countries, were discussed during the periodic meeting of the commission, which was held in New York, USA, and attended by Al Mansouri.
The annual report presents the comprehensive assessment on the level of access to the broadband networks around the world, particularly in the economic terms through the provision of data for each country to measure access to broadband in accordance with the main objectives set by the commission in 2011.
The aim of the meeting was also to assess and review the work of the commission and determine the future course of their work, as well as exchange of ideas on how to use the broadband better in the field of sustainable development.
The report predicted that the number of Internet users would rise to 3.5 billion people by the end of 2016, equivalent to 47 percent of the world’s population, according to the latest figures from the ITU.
Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer protocol that enables data communications over a packet switched network. Packet switching involves the sending and receiving of data in packets between two nodes in a network.