The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has revealed in their latest report that the cost of getting broadband outweighs monthly incomes in 19 of the world’s poorest countries.

The 100 page report, entitled “The State of Broadband 2012: Achieving Digital Inclusion for All” has detailed a county-by-country analysis on how global broadband deployment was being achieved – or, in the case of some nations, not being achieved.

“Huge discrepancies in affordability persist”, the report details, especially when one considers that last year the price of fixed broadband cost less than 2% of average monthly income in 40 developed economies.

The target for the ITU is a target price of less than 5% of average monthly income in developing countries by 2015.

It’s also been revealed that 119 countries have a national broadband plan, policy or strategy in place, however this may not be seen as much of a plus point when considered that the ITU wants to make broadband ‘universal’ by 2015.

In terms of fixed broadband penetration, there were few surprises in the overall league tables.

Liechtenstein and Monaco were at the top, but as it’s a developed economy with such a small population, this is hardly a surprise.

South Korea, Denmark and Iceland were the only countries in the top 10 for both fixed and mobile broadband. The UK was ranked 12 and 9, and the USA 18 and 8 respectively for fixed and mobile broadband.

In terms of countries lagging behind in fixed broadband penetration, the majority came from Africa, with 25 countries not registering in terms of fixed subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. For mobile, there were 45 countries which didn’t register.

“The strong growth in mobile broadband and smartphones is promising, but should not generate complacency”, the report warns.

It adds: “Indeed, growing multi-device ownership means that the number of mobile cellular subscriptions is today significantly larger than the number of actual mobile phone users”, whilst noting that by 2020 the number of connected devices may outnumber connected people six to one.

Elsewhere in the research, there’s an interesting note on the future language of the internet.

Any assumptions that it was going to be English may have to be called back slightly after the paper found that Chinese language published content is in an extremely close second place – English’s 565m users comparing to Chinese’s 510m.

However, the report predicts that Chinese will potentially overtake English as the number one language by 2015.

Are these figures surprising? But more importantly, will the target figures be met?