Building a 21st Century Communications Economy
In this paper, we highlight the potential of the Information Communications Technology (ICT) companies to help stimulate a high growth, low environmental impact economy. These companies include AT&T, Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft — companies that produce the hardware, develop the applications and provide the services that enable us to create and communicate information of all kinds.
Most importantly in this paper, we highlight how investing in a robust, reliable and high speed communications network and advanced broadband could have significant economic, environmental and social benefits, by ensuring citizens and governments, businesses and institutions have access to low cost, high capacity internet, whenever and wherever.
The ICT sector generates greater economic value (net income generation and jobs) than many other sectors for every metric ton of carbon it emits.
We term this ‘value per ton of carbon’. The role of ICT as an enabler for other companies to grow and reduce their emissions is also important. It can help other sectors increase their net income per ton of carbon by driving energy efficiencies and transforming the way we live and work.
