Despite fine words at this week's UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society, delegates from the developing world have slated the event for failing to come up with the funds crucial to achieving its stated aims.

The conference's central goal is to get the internet, telephones and other communications to at least half the world's inhabitants by 2015.

Doing so, many delegates argued, could speed up progress towards solutions to many problems in the developing world, including poverty, Aids, poor education and child mortality rates.

But IT aid workers such as Wainaina Mungai, a Kenyan seeking to spread news and information through digital radios, is sceptical that pronouncements from the gathering's podium would help much.

"There have been many initiatives, summits, declarations, very many commitments on text that have yet to be actualised," Mr Mungai said. "They need to put down money."

But governments and international agencies pledged only a trickle of financial support when, according to one organiser of the conference, it would take more than $6bn (£3.43bn) to extend telephone and internet coverage to all corners of the world.

Mr Mungai's funding is meagre as he tries to expand his work beyond pilot schemes in a half-dozen or so villages in Kenya and India. It uses WorldSpace satellite radio to relay villagers' information that they have sent to a central office via email and post. The summit - which was attended by 12,000 business and civic leaders, government officials and more than 40 head of state - also rejected a proposal from the Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade, to create a voluntary digital solidarity fund to help governments, companies and non-profit organisations narrow the so-called digital divide.

"It's in order to purchase equipment from developed countries, equipment to log on to the Internet," Mr Wade told the conference, adding that western companies would benefit from being able to sell more goods.

But western leaders insisted that existing funding mechanisms are adequate, essentially deferring serious discussion on the matter until the next information society summit in Tunisia in 2005.

Work on the digital divide was overshadowed by contentious issues such as how best to preserve freedom of expression and whether an independent UN agency should take over internet governance from the agency spawned by the US commerce department. Some financial support was announced, however.

A US aid agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, pledged $400m (£229m) in loans and loan guarantees for US companies that invest overseas in yet-to-be-determined digital divide projects.

A UN task force also launched an e-schools initiative to coordinate and connect existing but disparate efforts to connect schools to the global communication network - one of the summit's 2015 goals.

But little money has been committed to the project so far, and although the European Union has said it may be ready to contribute additional funds, it hasn't gone as far as to put a figure on any possible donation.

The EU information commissioner, Erkki Liikanen, said too much attention had been paid to funding projects. He said regulatory reforms - eliminating government monopolies and encouraging open markets, for one - would do much more to encourage private investments.

The World Bank's vice president for infrastructure, Nemat Shafik, echoed that sentiment and said the summit was useful in getting the issue on national agendas.

But Sean O'Siochru, a spokesman for the London-based group Communication Rights in the Information Society, said the lack of funding and other specifics is an ominous sign.

"There are some fine words, but not a whole lot in it," he said. "It's one thing to sign on, but it's another for anything to happen in a region or a country."

Andy Carvin, a digital divide expert at the Benton Foundation in Washington DC, would also like to see more specific goals and strategies from world leaders.

"It's interesting in a cynical way to see how governments have come to agree to pass the buck on a variety of these issues, including the digital solidarity fund," he said.

The secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, Yoshio Utsumi, said many of the details - including financing - will be addressed at the Tunisia summit. But many other specifics, he said, must remain the responsibility of individual countries.

While the government leaders made their speeches in main auditorium, other people and organizations showcased their projects in a separate hall on the floor below, an arrangement which some delegates saw as symbolic of the divisions which still exist.

There was relatively little interaction, with government officials using their own entrances, restaurants, lounges and even toilets.

"The people we've seen are mainly from NGOs," said Claire Flus, who works on providing access and local content in Brazilian shanty towns.

"The governments, I really can't see them. I don't find it obvious at all they are supporting this."