​New Delhi, India, 10 December 2014

Address

Dr S K Hajela, Chairman ITU-APT Foundation of India
Mr Yuzo Mori, Director of Planning, ITU Association of Japan
Mr Pradeep Kumar Rawat, Ministry of External Affairs, India
Mr Dalsuke Kawasaki, Embassy of Japan
Mr Ram Narain, Department of Telecommunication, India
Mr T V Ramachandran, Chairman IAFI Private Sector Initiative Committee
Distinguished guests
Colleagues and friends

It is a great pleasure to be with you today and I thank the ITU-APT Foundation of India for their kind invitation. I would also like to thank my good friends Mr T R Dua and Mr R N Agarwal for their kind words.

When I was told about this event I felt I had to be here. Both the ITU-APT Foundation of India and the ITU Association of Japan have been great supporters of ITU, and me personally over the last 8 years as Director of the ITU Standards Bureau.

I have been honoured to have the strong support of my colleagues and friends in India and Japan during this time, which has been very significant to my success as Director, and for which I am most grateful.

Japan is home to one of the most advanced ICT sectors in the world, while India’s ICT sector is one of the world’s fastest-growing.

This is why this Memorandum of Understanding makes such good sense and I am sure it will increase the effectiveness of both organisations.

Consequently it will benefit not only India and Japan, but the whole Asia Pacific region and the ITU, and I very much welcome this initiative.

The Asia Pacific region’s impact on the sector and consequently importance to ITU is increasing significantly:

• The regions accounts for 3.6 billion of the 7 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions worldwide.
• 44 per cent of the world’s fixed-broadband subscriptions.
•  One-third of the region’s population is online accounting for around 45 per cent of the world’s Internet users.

The region also makes a significant financial contribution to the ITU: the Asia Pacific governments contribute 27 per cent of the Member State contributions, and the regions private-sector members contribute 23% of the Sector Member financial contribution to ITU’s Standardization Sector. Japan is one of the two biggest contributors to ITU, and India recently doubled its contribution.

The ITU Association of Japan has been a member of all three ITU Sectors since 1993, and the ITU-APT Foundation of India joined the ITU’s Standardization and Development Sectors in 2009.

Next year ITU will next celebrate ITU’s 150th anniversary, which we will use to celebrate the extraordinary innovation which is the global telecommunication and ICT ecosystem – the greatest ever engineering feat.

This MoU will play a key role in helping the harmonization of regulatory and technical frameworks in ITU, and in improving the coordination of regional contributions to ITU.

I congratulate the ITU-APT Foundation of India and the ITU Association of Japan for their efforts to reach this agreement, and I look forward to celebrating our 150th anniversary with you next year, and in working with you over the coming years.