PARIS, France — The information and communication technology (ICT) sector has resisted the economic crisis and is becoming a key infrastructure for the world's economy, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said yesterday.

"The expansion of mobile Internet connectivity has helped buoy the ICT sector, and in many ways the economy as a whole, during a period of sustained economic malaise," the OECD said in a report based on a study of 250 top ICT firms.

"The Internet is becoming a key economic infrastructure, revolutionising businesses and serving as a platform for innovation," the Paris-based organisation of 34 leading industrialised countries.

The top firms registered an average annual growth rate in revenue of six per cent between 2000 and 2011, with total revenue at more than US$4.6 trillion ($411 trillion) in 2011, or an increase of five per cent over the previous year.

A key source of the growth has been an expansion of mobile connections, which overtook the number of fixed broadband subscriptions in 2009. In 2011, the estimated number of mobile subscriptions among OECD countries was at 667 million, or more than double that of the 315 million fixed connections.

— AFP