​Geneva, Switzerland, 15 January 2014

Opening Address

Ladies and gentlemen:

Good morning and welcome to ITU.

I am pleased to welcome you to the first meeting of Study Group 17 this year. In fact the first meeting of any study group this year ! I wish you all a very successful and enjoyable 2014 !

This year brings two conferences of great importance to the future of ITU:

ITU's sixth World Telecommunication Development Conference, at the end of March in Dubai UAE, will identify priorities for the Development Sector of ITU, including programmes to bring the technologies developed in the T Sector as well as the Radio Sector of ITU to developing countries. ITU-T and ITU-D have many common objectives, and work closely in areas such as the conformance and interoperability programme, environment issues, and emergency communications and disaster relief.

This will be followed in October in Busan, Republic of Korea, by the Plenipotentiary Conference where ITU Member States will decide the future role of the organization, its strategic and financial plans, and elect a new management team. Sad to say of course, this will be my last year as TSB Director !

I would like to briefly remind you of a few highlights of ITU-T work last year.

A key milestone for global e-health standardization was achieved in December with the publication of a new standard that gives interoperability design guidelines for personal health systems. Develop in close collaboration with Continua Health Alliance, these guidelines will decrease time-to-market, reduce development costs and increase efficiencies. In particular they will enable quicker, less expensive integration of electronic medical records and health information exchange platforms.

Also in December a new ITU broadband standard – G.fast – was consented by SG15 which enables access speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s over existing copper telephone wires.

SG13 consented a standard that allows cloud service providers to partner and interwork with others more efficiently.

The C&I Programme is now progressing well led by SG11 which is planning a conformance pilot test.

Study Group 16 completed the final extensions to ITU’s Primetime Emmy award winning video codec Recommendation ITU-T H.264, concluding 10 years of work since the standard was first approved in 2003. Its successor H.265 is already enjoying widespread market adoption on an impressive scale as it is 50% more efficient than its predecessor.

We organised numerous workshops last year including a very successful joint CITEL, ITU and the Internet Society workshop on combating SPAM in Mendoza, Argentina. I am pleased that this meeting will prepare for another ITU workshop on security in September, here in Geneva.

On the topic of workshops, and pursuant to WTSA Resolution 11 on collaboration with the Postal Union, a small UPU-ITU workshop will be held next week to explore opportunities for joint work with our sister organisation.

During Telecom World in Bangkok I had the pleasure of hosting a Briefing Session on ITU-T Security Standards which generated a lot of interest in the work of SG17 especailly from developing countries.

This meeting has an interesting and full agenda, with 63 Contributions submitted and 150 participants pre-registered, so I am sure it will continue this good work. I am pleased to welcome the new members. Unfortunately due to our limited budget we were only able to offer two fellowships, and had to refuse several more requests, but nevertheless we have a number of developing countries participating here for the first time: Bangladesh, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritania, Yemen, Kuwait, as well as Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication.

 You are all very welcome.

I am sure this interest in SG17 will continue to grow, especially with the exciting number of new work items that you have agreed.

Security is not something that can be left to chance, and standards provide the means to combat cyber threats for administrations, manufacturers, service providers and the vertical sectors that they serve. ITU’s contribution in this area is well recognised and appreciated.

You will be interested to know that the UN Chief Executive Board, chaired by the UN Secretary-General, has called for ITU to lead the development of a UN-wide, comprehensive strategy to address cybersecurity and cybercrime, together with UNESCO, UNODC, UNDP, and UNCTAD. This is an excellent example of the recognition of the role that ITU plays in mitigating cyber risks.

I would like to thank you Chairman and the management team your hard work in preparing for this meeting, and I wish you all a successful and enjoyable meeting.