UN telecommunications agency cited among top 10 most enduring institutions

The United Nations global telecommunications agency, whose roots go back 80 years before the world body was founded, today joined the United States Constitution as one of the world's top 10 most enduring institutions selected by a panel of distinguished scholars from US universities.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which brings together government and the private sector and has been instrumental in building global telecommunication networks through the advent of telephone, radio, television, satellite communications and Internet technologies, was cited in the category of Government Institution as "notable for its effective information flow."

The awards were announced by Booz Allen Hamilton, a global strategy consulting firm, in order to celebrate institutions that "have reinvented themselves time and again - and remained market leaders - as the unique circumstances of their founding have given way to changing conditions."

Founded in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, ITU became a specialized agency of the UN in 1947 and most recently held the first World Summit on the Information Society, at which 175 countries pledged to bring the benefits of information and communication technologies to all of humanity by 2015.