World Telecommunication Day is an international holiday aimed at raising global awareness of societal changes brought about by the Internet and telecommunication technologies, and helping to reduce the digital divide by improving the global reach of technology across all nations and socio-economic strata. Originally created to commemorate the founding of the International Telecommunication Union in 1865, the World Telecommunication Day has been proclaimed as the World Information Society Day by a United Nations General Assembly resolution following the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. The first World Telecommunication Day was celebrated in 1969. Since then the 17th of May has been observed as World Telecommunication Day every year.

Over the years, the World Telecommunication Day has celebrated the following telecommunications developments:

• Invention of the first electric telegraph in 1837.
• Invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.
• First provisions for international telephone service took place in 1885.
• First signals transmitted by radio-relay system in 1895.
• First radio transmission of human voice in 1902.
• Broadcasting of voice and music through radiotelephony in 1906.
• Sound broadcasting pioneered in 1920.
• Invention of telegraph in 1932.
• World's first artificial satellite Sputnik-I launched in 1957
• 1983 was celebrated as the "World Communications Year".