Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General
2nd BRICS Communications Ministers' Meeting - Welcome Address
10 November 2016, Bangalore, India
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning. It is a great pleasure to be here again in Bangalore, and I thank the Indian government for inviting ITU to this meeting. I convey the greetings of ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao who could not be here with you today as he is attending the UN Chief Executive Board meeting in New York. His misfortune is my good fortune!
Let me firstly say how much the Secretary-General, myself and the other elected officials, and ITU staff appreciate the tremendous support the BRICS countries give to ITU.
As you will know last week we saw the conclusion of ITU’s major event for 2016: the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, in Tunisia. The WTSA gave further impetus to ITU studies on: mobile roaming tariffs; cloud computing; the Internet of Things and Smart Cities, amongst other topics.
This emphasizes the importance of ITU’s work to facilitate access to the information and knowledge society which is essential for sustainable socio-economic development.
A world where everyone is connected to the Internet will be a better place. A better place to be informed, to be educated, to receive healthcare, to be productive and enjoy a better standard of living.
However, to benefit from the many innovative products and services on the Internet, or more generally information and communication technologies (ICTs), requires high speed broadband connectivity. This is why ITU is continually emphasizing the importance of broadband, no longer a luxury but an essential utility.
If we look at the 169 targets set to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals it is clear that they can only be met by widespread highspeed access to ICTs.
As the lead UN agency for ICTs, we believe ITU has a major role to play in achieving these goals. Most people now connect to the Internet through their smart phones. There is an increasing demand from more users wanting faster connection to download more and more data. This places great demand on the radio frequency spectrum. It has to be agreed internationally, otherwise these phones would not work when moving from one country to another, and the cost of phones would be much higher if they did not comply with global standards and benefit from the resulting economies of scale. It is only through the international treaty on the use of the radio frequency spectrum, that ITU has been maintaining for the last 110 years, that this can be achieved. All these devices need to be able to interoperate and this can only be achieved by compliance with international standards, something ITU has been doing for even longer. The networks carrying all this data and communications traffic rely on ITU’s international standards. The development of Internet of Things and 5G will place far great demands on the network.
Bringing the benefits of this technology to all the world’s citizens is a major goal of the ITU. Encouraging countries to adopt the policies and regulations that will provide the incentives to invest in the provision of broadband services, that stimulate innovation and help develop the necessary skills is the third pillar of ITU’s work.
We are living in turbulent times. Technology is moving at an incredible pace. New innovations arrive almost daily. This places great strain and challenges on the regulatory environment. We are in a global market and for success there needs to be some commonality in the regulatory environments around the world.
The next World Radio Conference in 2019 will be vital in considering new allocation for use by 5G, and as I said earlier, agreement on global allocations will be very important to ensure the major benefits for interoperability, roaming and economies of scale. For this reason, I encourage the BRICS countries to actively contribute to the on-going ITU-R studies to ensure that your requirements are fully met, and that you benefit from globally harmonized spectrum and standards. A fragmented market will only add to costs and deter takeup in developing countries.
The BRICS countries have extraordinary potential for growth, and with your key strategic asset of large highly educated populations I am sure we will see great progress in the BRICS countries over the next five-ten years.
You can rest assured of ITU’s support in this endeavour, and in turn we count on your continued support to ITU so that we can fulfil our mission.
So to conclude, I encourage BRICS to continue to participate actively in ITU’s work, take advantage of your membership, encourage more of your industry and academia to contribute to the spectrum and standards development work as well as the recommendations on the best enabling environment, so as to help achieve the goals set by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
I wish you a very enjoyable and productive BRICS meeting.
Thank you very much.
