Summary

  • Doreen Bogdan-Martin helped promote Partner2Connect as ITU’s development chief before taking office as Secretary-General in 2023; the coalition’s pledge total is evidence of mobilization, not a count of connections delivered.
  • ITU’s own reporting shows why the next evaluation must keep pledge value, self-reported implementation and people’s actual experience separate.

A global pledge total is easy to announce and hard to interpret. Partner2Connect’s live portal now lists 1,101 pledges from 508 entities across 149 countries, with an estimated value of USD 122 billion. That is a substantial record of organizations willing to make public commitments. It is not, by itself, a record of money spent, networks activated, households connected or service that is affordable and reliable.

That distinction makes Doreen Bogdan-Martin a useful person to follow. She took office as Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union on 1 January 2023. Before that, she led ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau from 2018 and actively promoted Partner2Connect. ITU describes her work in terms of international cooperation and partnerships, while the coalition itself was launched by ITU in 2021 with UN partners. Her influence lies in agenda-setting, convening and the institution’s reporting architecture; the pledgers remain responsible for carrying out their projects.

The scale of the coalition is real, but the evidence ledger is a different object. ITU’s 2024 annual report counted 956 submitted pledges from 452 entities. It said 363 pledges had progress reports, submitted by 182 entities: 38 per cent of pledges and 40 per cent of entities. Those ratios describe reporting against that report’s cohort. They do not show that the other pledges failed, because some were newer; nor do they establish that reported work reached its intended users. The report says pledgers can update the online form and are expected to report at least annually.

The current reports dashboard makes another boundary visible: its aggregate reporting data are based on pledges received up to one year earlier. That window is a reasonable way to avoid treating every recent commitment as overdue. It also means a headline pledge count and a progress chart do not cover the same population at the same moment. An ITU progress report later described reports from half of participating entities, but that entity-level figure is not a direct update to the 2024 pledge-level rate. The denominators and reporting periods must travel with the percentages.

The outcome standard is broader still. ITU’s Universal and Meaningful Connectivity framework tracks six interdependent conditions: quality, availability, affordability, devices, skills and security. A fast network cannot compensate for a device a household cannot afford; a coverage map cannot establish that users have the skills or safety needed to benefit. The framework gives governments a way to organize measurement, but it does not turn a pledge into evidence of improved education, health or income. Those effects need their own measures and a plausible link to a project.

In July 2026, ITU said that pledgers are responsible for delivery while the organization provides a platform to track progress and share practice. The same release placed the USD 100 billion milestone beside an estimated USD 2.6–2.8 trillion still required to achieve universal and meaningful connectivity by 2030. Read together, those statements describe a convening and tracking role, not a guarantee that the announced amount has already financed the remaining need.

The next test is therefore institutional rather than personal blame. Bogdan-Martin can lead an organization that distinguishes what was promised, what was funded, what is operating, and what users can actually do with it. A ledger that keeps those states separate would make P2C’s scale more credible—and would let partners learn where capital, skills, devices or policy still block the connection.

Sources