World Telecommunication and Information Society Day coincides with the celebration of Internet Day, and this is no coincidence: in both cases the commemoration is of the first International Telegraph Convention and the creation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on 17 May 1865.
We are therefore dealing with an institution that is now 160 years old and which, as recognised on its own website, ‘is a history of international cooperation between governments, private companies and other interested parties’ whose ‘permanent mission is to achieve the best practical solutions for integrating new technologies as they are developed, and to spread their benefits to all’.
Origin of World Telecommunication Day
In 1969, more than a hundred years after the ITU was founded, World Telecommunication Day was approved to be celebrated on 17 May.
To commemorate this first edition, the then president of the ITU, the Tunisian Mohamed Ezzedine Mili, explained that ‘the annual celebration of the anniversary of the first International Telegraph Convention will allow us to better understand the common effort of all those who participate in the great adventure of modern telecommunications’.
Even at the end of the 60s, Mili was already saying that ‘nowadays, no one is surprised to connect their radio receiver and receive broadcasts from the most diverse countries, just as no one is surprised, in countries with a television network, to see images coming from space on the screen. And likewise we think it’s normal to communicate by telephone with correspondents on the other side of the world, and for ships at sea, aeroplanes in flight, manned satellites during their cosmic journey to be able to be in contact with land’.
Although technological evolution over the decades has changed many things, the spirit of maintaining connections and communications has remained since the founding of this international telecommunications day.
As the ITU president himself summarised at the time, ‘radio links, submarine, underground or surface cables form a dense network around the Earth that is now extending to the stars. But these links, visible or invisible, are such a part of our daily lives that it is impossible to imagine that one day they might fail us or, despite their number and diversity, become entangled.
Birth of the Information Society Day, which later led to the creation of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day
Until 2005, World Telecommunication Day continued to exist as such, as it had done for decades.
However, in November of that same year, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) asked the UN General Assembly, one of the main bodies of the United Nations, to also declare 17 May as World Information Society Day in order to focus on the growing relevance of information and communication technologies (ICTs).
With resolution A/RES/60/252 this designation was thus stipulated with the following explanation: It is ‘decided to proclaim 17 May as World Information Society Day, to be celebrated every year in order to contribute to a better understanding of the potential of the Internet and other information and communication technologies for societies and economies, as well as of the different ways to bridge the digital divide’.
In 2006, the two days were celebrated separately: telecommunications day and information society day.
However, in November 2006, the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in the Turkish city of Antalya decided to celebrate both events together under the name World Telecommunication and Information Society Day on 17 May. Thus, in 2007 it was celebrated for the first time under this name.
