Meeting the 2025 Targets: Connectivity, Affordability, Access, Equality and Use
The seven 2025 Advocacy Targets of the Broadband Commission reflect ambitious and aspirational goals and function as a policy and programmatic guide for national and international action. From the initial four connectivity goals established when the Commission was first organized, the targets were expanded to five in 2013 with the addition of the gender equality goal. In January 2018, at its Special Session at the Annual General Meeting of the World Economic Forum, the Broadband Commission extended and updated the five broadband targets to a total of seven targets focusing on 2025 target date43. This chapter focuses on progress towards the 2025 Advocacy Targets, including a review of the progress made today since the start of the Commission in 2010.44
Data Collection Challenges
Accurate and up-to-date data collection remains a challenge for some for the advocacy targets, as noted in the sections above. Many of the data series used for these targets come from national statistical agencies. The process of collecting data at these levels of granularity remains labor-intensive and incurs high cost burdens. Some of the data available for measuring progress against the targets is more robust for developed countries and remains a challenge for some developing countries. There may be other methodologies to collect similar, or proxy, datasets, and/or consider reporting on a semi-annual basis rather than annual. As such, further discussion on these challenges, possibilities and trade-offs is required.