I'd like to get a list of all the countries of the world, sorted by
their total telecommunication expenditures.  The data must be no more
than 10 years old and include the expenditures in a common currency
(US dollars, preferably).

I won't pay for an answer of "Well, that data just doesn't exist." 
However, if you can't find a list of ALL countries, I'll settle for a
list of all the countries whose telecom expenditures exceed 50 million
USD annually.

Hi. This is a very interesting query.

Most of data presented here can be found on the survey of the Witsa
organization.
 
According to the WITSA (World Information Technology and Services
Alliance) organization the Global ICT (Information Communications
Market is pegged at $2 trillion. The following countries are the top
telecom spenders.

1997 - figures

In Billions of dollars

US – $643
Japan – $317
Germany – $119
UK – $102
France – $91
Italy – $50 
Brazil – $34
Spain  - $23
China – $18.8
Taiwan – $12.1
HK - $12 
Greece – $3.7
Portugal – $3.4
Russia – $3.2


Digital Planet
http://www.witsa.org/press/digplanpr.htm 

--------------------------------------
Other country spending are available but are in chart form so I would
not elaborate on the amounts since it will now be speculative in
nature. At least the charts shall give you an idea per country.

Charts from Digital Planet as regards to top global IT spending
http://www.witsa.org/press/tta.htm 

http://www.witsa.org/press/ttb.htm (Latin America)
http://www.witsa.org/press/ttc.htm (Asia not including Japan) 

A region-by-region discussion on Telecom spending
http://www.witsa.org/DP2000sum.pdf 

Other sites you might find interesting 
An in-depth look at some ICT figures in the Asia Pacific Region
http://www.unescap.org/drpad/publication/survey1999/svy4c.htm 

A complete publication listing of data per country is available at
http://www.witsa.org

WITSA members: $50 plus shipping
Non-WITSA members: $75 plus shipping

In its 2001 study in which the details were not revealed for free but
must be paid for the following changes have been made:

US – 812.6
Japan – 413
Germany - 154.6

China is the now the fastest growing telecom spender in the world. It
has already overtaken Australia in the Asia pacific region. (not
including Japan)
http://www.itaa.org/news/view/ViewPoint.cfm?ID=20 

A presentation of Mexico’s ICT spending ranking:
http://www.amiti.org.mx/biblioteca/The%20Digital%20Planet%20A%20Snapshot%20of%20the%20World%20of%20IT%20-%20Harris%20Mil.pdf

The following file presents comparison charts on ICT spending of
European Countries. (This data is presented in a common currency not
in dollars but in the Euro currency).
http://www.kbn.gov.pl/is2000/pdf/word2.PDF 

This document from the World Bank discusses ICT market opportunities
in developing countries.
http://www.worldbank.org/data/wdi2001/pdfs/statesmkts.pdf 

Search terms used:
Global telecom ICT spending

I hope this will help you in your research. Thanks for being a part of
Google Answers.

Regards, 
Easterangel-ga

A decent answer, but not exactly what I was asking for.

Todd, 

The information you want does exist, but it is not freely available. 
The data you seek is compiled and for sale:

World Information Technology and Services Alliance - Digital Planet
Report
Spending and cost comparisons, broken down by country and by sector. 
$75
[ http://www.itaa.org/news/pubs/product.cfm?EventID=172 ]

The Telecommunications Spending Report
Worldwide spending by country and sector.  $795
[ http://allnetresearch.internet.com/item/0,3008,2329583_1,00.html ]

missy-ga

It's available, you just have to know where to look:

				5-Year Expenditures (1995-1999)
				on Telecommunications
				(millions US dollars)

 Japan				165,583.49
  United States			119,672.71
  China				72,841.80
  Germany			51,162.02
  United Kingdom			37,189.38
  Brazil				35,319.99
  France				32,025.21
  Korea, Republic of		22,784.88
  Canada				18,234.50
  Italy				17,297.89
  Australia			16,829.76
  India				12,490.74
  Mexico				11,250.28
  Taiwan Province of China		10,568.53
  Spain				10,339.22
  Argentina			8,309.50
  Malaysia			7,716.84
  Austria				7,262.16
  China, Hong Kong SAR		6,793.09
  Philippines			6,635.34
  Switzerland			6,561.56
  Portugal			6,308.96
  South Africa			6,005.15
  Indonesia			6,000.19
  Russian Federation		5,634.53
  Norway			5,634.10
  Czech Republic			5,251.49
  Netherlands			4,942.47
  Belgium			4,936.51
  Poland				4,522.52
  Finland				4,284.91
  Chile				4,250.83
  Denmark			4,153.05
  Sweden			4,124.30
  Colombia			3,954.14
  Venezuela			3,881.04
  Greece				3,711.10
  Israel				3,448.74
  Peru				3,206.56
  Hungary			3,039.87
  Turkey				2,611.66
  Singapore			2,532.84
  Myanmar			2,028.99
  Thailand			2,025.70
  United Arab Emirates		1,940.20
  Syrian Arab Republic		1,783.38
  New Zealand			1,541.87
  Pakistan			1,407.05
  Romania			1,330.70
  Ireland				1,185.45
  Slovakia			1,173.70
  Puerto Rico			1,116.06
  Morocco			1,022.01
  Viet Nam			997.37
  Ukraine				945.80
  Ghana				924.33
  Croatia				912.59
  United Republic of Tanzania	841.77
  Egypt				712.93
  Honduras			679.72
  Sri Lanka			663.39
  Yugoslavia, Fed. Rep. of		659.21
  Tunisia				628.87
  Uruguay			602.82
  Kuwait				536.12
  Slovenia			513.99
  Luxembourg			494.87
  Latvia				458.55
  Algeria				450.90
  Nigeria				442.35
  Jordan				429.52
  Jamaica				426.99
  Lithuania			387.80
  Cyprus				370.29
  Côte d'Ivoire			361.47
  Costa Rica			351.41
  Belarus				327.82
  Cuba				323.73
  Bahrain				320.62
  Bulgaria			319.79
  Bolivia				317.23
  Bangladesh			313.11
  Uzbekistan			307.10
  Zimbabwe			306.13
  Kazakhstan			285.74
  Senegal			285.42
  The fmrr Yug. Rep. of Macedonia	280.22
  Mauritius			259.05
  Iran, Islamic Rep. of		257.73
  Estonia				257.66
  Ecuador			235.75
  Paraguay			218.16
  Sudan				206.74
  Namibia			203.76
  Kenya				198.09
  Iceland				192.58
  Oman				179.64
  Madagascar			173.41
  Macau				165.35
  Botswana			164.11
  Uganda			149.98
  Guinea				147.09
  New Caledonia			133.62
  Yemen				131.55
  Mali				131.18
  Qatar				129.01
  Gabon				128.92
  Barbados			117.03
  Libyan Arab Jamahiriya		110.60
  Nepal				109.52
  Armenia			108.72
  Cameroon			103.88
  Trinidad and Tobago		103.04
  Saudi Arabia			99.92
  Nicaragua			98.95
  Togo				91.23
  Fiji				89.43
  Burkina Faso			89.43
  Malta				87.44
  Bosnia and Herzegovina		86.21
  Bermuda			85.00
  Moldova, Republic of		84.50
  Ethiopia			79.98
  El Salvador			72.53
  Guyana				69.60
  Guadeloupe			64.95
  Cape Verde			63.53
  Maldives			58.62
  United States Virgin Islands	57.20
  Eritrea				55.45
  Suriname			55.27
  Mongolia			54.36
  Mauritania			52.17

There is a very large discrepancy between the answer easterangel-ga
gave, and the comment by davidsar-ga:

$643 billion USD and $119 billion USD.

To davidsar, I suggest giving the URL(s) that you used for locating
that information, so it might be checked by toddbradley-ga for
accuracy.

Yes, I'm curious where these numbers come from, davidsar-ga.  If
they're from a reliable source, your "comment" was the most complete
answer to my question.

What makes the numbers from Easterangel-ga and davidsar-ga even MORE
out of whack is that the ones from davidsar-ga are for a 5 year
period.  So davidsar-ga is giving an average annual amount of around
119 / 5 = 24 billion for the USA, while Easterangel-ga is giving an
annual amount of 643 billion.  So there's a factor of 30 discrepancy. 
Hmm.  Very strange.

Glad to see all the interest and good research on this question.  The
data I presented (which I cut off at $50 million -- there are more
countries listed with smaller expenditures) came from the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development at
http://stats.unctad.org/.  Specifically,  Table 5.5  Telecommunication
indicators by country (you have to register to access the site, but
it's free).

UNCTAD doesn't explain in depth the source of the data, but perhaps if
you contact them, they can provide more insight.  I believe the data
are originally from the International Telecommunication Union
(www.itu.org), also a UN agency, that makes this kind of data
available at a cost.  I'm speculating, but I think the reason UNCTAD
presents 5-year data, is to protect the proprietary nature of ITU's
annual data.

As to why such huge discrpeancies between different data sources, Who
knows?  But it's certainly not uncommon.  The definitions of what
amounts to a "telecommunication expenditure" are very idiocyncratic
(however it's spelled!) and will certainly differ from one source to
another.  It's a question that could be answered, but would take a lot
of work.

By the way, are you the Todd Bradley of Palm fame?

First off, no I'm not the Todd Bradley of Palm fame.  I'm the Todd
Bradley of 404 Not Found (http://www.404notfound.net) fame.

Second, I'm guessing the difference may be revealed by the way the
data is labeled.  The UN data is "5-year investment in
telecommunications (millions of dollars)" which may imply government
investment into this area, as opposed to commercial or consumer
investment.  That's just a guess, but it makes sense that the UN would
be more interested in a country's government's behavior.

Finally, davidsar-ga, I do like your answer the best.  Unfortunately,
it's listed here as a comment, not an answer.  Which means I can't
really pay you for it (unless there's something I'm missing about this
server).  I guess that's a good issue Google will need to work out as
part of rolling out Google Answers.  How do you deal with cases where
more than one person wants to answer a question?  Right now it looks
like only one person can officially answer it.