Keynote Speech

Delivered by H.E. Nguyen Thanh Hung
Vice Minister of Information and Communications of Viet Nam

His Excellency (H.E) Mr. Mohamad Bin Ahmad Al-Qamzi, Chairman, TRA Board of Directors, United Arab Emirate,

Dr Hamadoun I. TOURE, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union (ITU),

H.E. Mr Nasser BIN OBOOD AL FALASI, Group Chief Corporate Officer, Etisalat Group,

Mr. Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, International Telecommunication Union (ITU),


Excellencies, Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
First of all, as Chairman of the first Global Standardization Symposium 2008, I would like to express my sincere thanks to ITU and the United Arab Emirate for their great efforts in preparation for this event. We are all very delighted to be here in the beautiful city of Dubai.

The first Global Standards Symposium was held in Johannesburg, South Africa in October 2008, prior to the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08). In the first Symposium, we examined global ICT standards challenges, such as accessibility, climate change and collaboration among standards development organizations. Since then, many programs have been initiated to promote our cooperation in standardization of ICT, with active contributions from regulators, policy makers and industry champions from around the world.

Ladies and gentlemen,
In the context of increasingly diversified ICT applications, cooperation between different standardization areas, various ICT standardization organizations are becoming more important. Standards help assuring compatibility, interoperability and accessibility regardless of technology, network and service.
In line with these new developments, the symposium this year will facilitate discussion and coordination on essential issues: bridging standardization gaps, global standards challenges, global standards collaboration, with a focus on the intersection of the ICT sector with other vertical sectors such as health care, utilities, and transport.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Bridging standardization gaps is high on our agenda, acknowledging the important role of developing countries in the development of new standards. Through economies of scale, effective collaboration of developing countries can reduce costs for all: manufacturers, operators and consumers. This is also the spirit in the slogan of the World Standards Day (14 October) this year: “Less waste, better results – Standards increase efficiency”.

On innovation to standards, developing countries are also making more contributions. The market size of developing countries provides unique opportunities for leveraging network effects to drive innovation. Interoperable standards provide a solid foundation on which innovation can take place to develop new, smarter solutions.

Over the last four years, our colleagues in developing countries have made great effort in dealing with their difficulties, in both financial and human resources. Particularly, the lack of standard-making capable experts certainly slows down the progresses in creating orientations for standardization activities, drafting and issuing national standards. To this end, bridging the standardization gap between developing and developed countries is still our priority and more incentives should be given to programs in this purpose.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Discussions on Global standards challenges will be a key session of this Symposium. Global standardization is helping to deal with basic demands on communication conveniently through standardizing of equipments, networks, services, transferring of images, texts and multimedia services like video conferences… However, we realize the increasing need in developing applications and services in order to serve human life, and thus the need to foster standardization activities in areas like e-health, e-education, e-agriculture and in e-environment applications.

Standardization activities in the above field seems to be incoherent and spontaneous, and should be improved systematically via research organization or focus study group with the close collaboration with professional organization on health, agriculture, science such as WHO, FAO… in order develop standardization on ICT applications.

Another challenge in ICT development is to foster information security. Standards on information security are now being revised and supplemented by ITU-T, ISO/IEC, IETF… We acknowledge the effort of ITU and other organizations in improving security standards in recent years and I am of the view that more resources need to be allocated to this work. Also on security concern, we’ve witnessed the impact of natural disasters like typhoons, tsunami, earthquakes on our communications infrastructures. The core goal of telecom standardization should be ensuring resilience of networks to disasters.

Green ICT standards is not a new term but is really a new challenge for national standard bodies, especially in developing countries. While recognizing the importance of ICT standards to build a green economy, our concerted effort is needed to raise awareness and to facilitate a widespread use of energy-efficient ICT.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Partnerships and collaboration is essential in our work since standards-making is becoming increasingly complex and costly. This symposium will facilitate discussions and exchange of our views in order to stimulate creative, innovative contributions and initiatives for ITU activities. I do believe that with your active contributions, the conclusions of our Symposium will be valuable for WTSA-12 when determining the development of ICT standardization in the next 4 years.

Finally, on behalf of the delegation of Vietnam, I wish to express my sincere thanks to the host country, the United Arab Emirate, for the hospitality and excellent arrangements. I also wish to take this opportunity to express my gratitude and appreciation to Dr. Hamadoun Toure, Mr. Malcolm Johnson and all ITU officials and staffs for their support to standardization in developing countries. We look forward to working closely with the ITU and member countries to promote global ICT standards.

I would like to wish all of you a fruitful working day and wish this Symposium a great success.

Thank you for your attention.