The United States ranks the highest among 50 surveyed countries in Huawei’s 2015 Global Connectivity Index, while China is at the forefront of the developing markets.
The index is based on the strength of robust supply and demand of ICT services, as well as an advanced state of adoption.
Other mature economies including Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom round out the top five.
Chile, China, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) lead the developing markets, with all three ranking in the high teens to low twenties overall.
Developing market leaders are characterized by strong mobile adoption and overall access that is often comparable to developed markets, while typically lagging behind in terms of data center investment and other core elements of ICT infrastructure.
Datacenter investment by developed countries is three times that of developing countries, which is the major catalyst of cloud proliferation as “the edge does not exist without the core.”
Overall, the 2015 GCI shows that 20% growth in ICT investment will increase a country’s GDP by 1%. It also identifies five enablers of digital transformation – data centers, cloud services, Big Data, broadband, and the Internet of Things.
These technologies represent the targets that stakeholders should focus their investments on in order to most efficiently transform their economies for the digital age.
“The GCI is not merely a ranking of countries,” said Kevin Zhang, president of Huawei Corporate Marketing. “We see it as a platform to partner with policymakers and enterprise leaders to identify, harness, and create new digital economy opportunities with the aim of building a better connected world.”