(16 August 2008 3:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: The 3rd United Nations Meet on Internet Governance, to be held in Hyderabad later this year, will be on the theme of ‘Internet for All’.

The meeting of the Geneva based Internet Governance Forum (IGF) of the UN from 3 to 6 December is being held in Asia for the first time. The earlier two meets were held in Athens in 2006 and in Rio de Janeiro in 2007.

An estimated 1,400 delegates are likely to attend the Hyderabad meeting comprising governments, academia, industry and cvil cociety. Leading IT companies, Internet Service Providers, information security professionals are expected to attend. Multi-stakeholder participation is the basis of IGF deliberations.

The proposed agenda of the third IGF Meeting includes subjects like ‘Reaching the next billion’; ‘Promoting Cyber-security and trust’, ‘Managing critical Internet resources’. ‘Taking stock and the way forward’ and ‘Emerging issues – the Internet of tomorrow’.

The IGF theme complements that of the 2008 World Telecommunications and Information Society Day, which is, ‘connecting people with disabilities’. The theme underscores the importance of ensuring that world’s 650 million people with disabilities are included while moving towards the objective of giving internet access to the next billion people.

An estimated one billion people across the world are estimated to be connected to the internet.