Less than 10 per cent of the world’s population had basic internet access in 2003, Paul Mountford told the Silicon Valley Challenge Summit last month, vividly illustrating the size of the “digital divide” which separates the information rich from the information poor.

Mr Mountford is president of Cisco Systems’ emerging markets group, which works with 130 countries, China and India excepted, where the divide is a reality and a potential threat to political stability and economic progress.