Dubai: The UAE has made the biggest change in country rankings by jumping 14 places to 32 as per International Telecommunication Union’s 2014 ICT Development Index (IDI) released on Monday.

The measurement ranks 166 countries according to their level of ICT access, use and skills.

In terms of regional comparisons, Europe’s average IDI value of 7.14 remains well ahead of the next best-performing region, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS — 5.33), followed by the Americas (4.86), Asia & the Pacific (4.57), the Arab States (4.55), and Africa at 2.31.

The CIS and the Arab States showed the highest improvement in regional IDI averages over the past 12 months.

The report identifies a group of ‘most dynamic countries’, which have recorded above-average improvements in their IDI rank over the past 12 months. These include (in order of most improved): UAE, Fiji, Cape Verde, Thailand, Oman, Qatar, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Georgia.

Bahrain is ranked 27th, followed by UAE at 32nd, Qatar at 34th, Saudi Arabia at 47th and Oman at 52nd.

IDI values are on average twice as high in the developed world than in developing countries.

Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, Secretary-General of ITU, said that over three billion people are now online and ICT growth remains buoyant in just about every country worldwide.

“The number of internet users in developing countries has doubled in five years (2009-2014), with two thirds of all people online now living in the developing world. Of the 4.3 billion people not yet using the internet, 90 per cent live in developing countries. In the world’s 42 Least Connected Countries (LCCs), which are home to 2.5 billion people, access to ICT remains largely out of reach, particularly for those countries’ large rural populations.

In the mobile cellular segment, the report estimates that by end 2014 there will be seven billion mobile subscriptions, roughly corresponding to the total global population. But it warns against concluding that everyone is connected; instead, many users have multiple subscriptions, with global growth figures sometimes translating into little real improvement in the level of connectivity of those at the very bottom of the pyramid.

An estimated 450 million people worldwide live in places which are still out of reach of mobile cellular service.

Encouragingly, the report notes substantial improvements in access to international bandwidth in poorer countries, with developing nations’ share of total global international bandwidth rising from just 9 per cent in 2004 to over 30 per ent today. But lack of sufficient international internet bandwidth in many of the LCCs remains an important barrier to ICT uptake in these countries, and often limits the quality of internet access.

“It is precisely in poor and rural areas where ICTs can make a particularly significant impact,” said Brahima Sanou, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau.

By the end of this year, Sanou said that almost 44 per cent of households globally will have internet access at home, up from 40 per cent last year and 30 per cent in 2010. In the developed world, 78 per cent of households now have home internet access, compared to 31 per cent in developing countries, and just 5 per cent in the 48 UN Least Developed Countries.