George Sciadas

This section provides a quantitative overview of the state and relative progress of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the Asia Pacific region, and it is intended to complement the work in this volume, including the individual country chapters. It must be borne in mind that the figures on ICT diffusion and use are affected significantly, if not determined outrightly, by the multitude of developments concerning the new technologies or their applications, government policies or their absence, regulation and business initiatives described in this publication. Therefore, the analysis that follows aspires to offer a realistic perspective against which to assess the combined reach and effects of these developments as they are reflected in the figures at any given time.

Following the merger of the work of Orbicom and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in the area of international benchmarking for the information society, this quantitative analysis is based on ITU's ICT Opportunity Index (ITU 2007) and it uses Orbicom's Infostate conceptual framework, which is based on the quantifiable notions of Infodensity and Infouse. This framework enables analysis both across and within countries over time, as well as the monitoring of progress with regard to specific ICTs (Orbicom 2003, 2005).

The ICT Opportunity Index is the aggregation of the following components and indicators: