Information and communications technology (ICT) is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT), but is a more specific term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration oftelecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information.
The term ICT is also used to refer to theconvergence of atelephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives (huge cost savings due to elimination of the telephone network) to merge the telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution and management.
The phrase Information and Communication Technology has been used by academic researchers since the 1980s, and the termICT became popular after it was used in a report to the UK government by Dennis Stevenson in 1997 and in the revisedNational Curriculum for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000. But in 2012, theRoyal Society recommended that the termICT should no longer be used in British schools "as it has attracted too many negative connotations", and with effect from 2014 the National Curriculum was changed to use the word computingreflecting the addition of computer programming to the curriculum. A leading group of universities consider ICT to be a soft subject and advise students against studying A-level ICT, preferring instead A-level Computer Science.
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