The Secretary-General, after consulting the Director of BDT, sends an invitation to the administration of each Member State, to the ITU-D Sector Members, to the organizations and institutions referred to in the relevant provisions of Article 25 of the ITU Convention as well as to Palestine in accordance with Resolution 99 (Rev. Antalya, 2006).

Member State delegations attending world telecommunication development conferences do not need to present credentials. However, the Director of BDT must be informed about the intention to send a delegation, with the names and functions of all delegation members (N°. 339 of the ITU Convention).

To ensure that the necessary arrangements can be made in a timely fashion, Member States and Sector Members wishing to participate in the World Telecommunication Development Conference and organizations, agencies and other entities that are eligible to attend as observers under Article 25 of the ITU Convention or Resolution 99 (Rev. Antalya, 2006) are requested to pre-register, starting on 15 January 2010.

Pre-registration will be carried out exclusively online through focal points designated by each administration and entity entitled to participate in the Conference.

Pre-registration will start on 15 January 2010 and will be carried out exclusively online through focal points designated by each administration and entity entitled to participate in the Conference. Onsite registration will start as from 20 May 2010.

The role of Focal points is to handle registration formalities for their respective administrations and entities. The list of Focal Points can be accessed, using a TIES log-in, at this address.

The World Telecommunication Development Conference will set up committees to conduct its work. The draft structure of the Conference is to be found in Annex 2, along with suggested terms of reference for the committees and for the Working Group of the Plenary.

Subject to the available financial resources and in order to encourage participation, one fellowship may be granted per administration of Least Developed Countries (LDC) and countries with GDP per capita of less than USD 2’000, with priority to LDCs. Fellowship forms may be requested by completing the appropriate section of the online registration form. Pre-registration with requests to obtain a fellowship form must be submitted no later than 5 April 2010. The deadline for applying for the fellowship is 30 April 2010.

The following preparatory documents will be published:

• Report by the Director of BDT on the Bureau's activities, including those relating to the preparation of WTDC-10

• Report by the Telecommunication Development Advisory Group (TDAG)

• Report on the regional preparatory meetings for WTDC-10

• Reports by the Study Group chairmen

• Report on the state of telecommunication development in the world

• Proposals and contributions by Member States and ITU-D Sector Members to the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC-10)

In compliance with Council Resolution 1141 and Resolution 154 (PP-06), work of WTDC-10 will be conducted in as a paperless manner as possible. Each participant will receive along with his/her badge, a memory (USB) key that will contain all documents available by 1 May 2010. As long as the key remains plugged into the laptop to access the WTDC-10 website, the key will automatically synchronize the ITU FTP document server to allow participants to have at hand at any time all published documents of the Conference in any of the six official ITU languages that are available. Each delegation and participating entity will receive one set of documents (print version).

Documents will available on the WTDC-10 website at www.itu.int/ITU-D/conferences/wtdc/alldocuments.html

Participants are therefore requested to bring their laptops. For those with no laptop, a cybercafé will be available to download and print documents, as required, on a self-service basis.

Owing to the limited duration of WTDC-10 and the time constraints imposed by the need for translation into six languages, proposals to the work of the Conference should reach the secretariat as soon as possible. It will not be possible to guarantee, on time for the Conference, the translation of proposals submitted after the deadline of 26 February 2010, i.e. three months prior to the opening of WTDC-10.

In order to consolidate the various proposals submitted in a way that lends itself to the elaboration of a solid, cohesive and powerful package consisting of inter-related and mutually reinforcing components, a template has been developed and can be found at www.itu.int/ITU-D/conferences/wtdc/documents/template.html.

In addition to providing a common approach to submit proposals, the template will also provide a fast-track to the processing of the input documents by reducing the reformatting of the proposals/contributions. Proposals not submitted on this template may therefore result in delays in their processing and posting.

In accordance with N°. 42 of the General Rules of Conferences, Assemblies and Meetings of the Union, documents containing more than one proposal should be submitted with a number to identify each proposal along with the topic of the proposal. The secretariat will annotate each proposal with index numbers composed as follows:

ABC/25/3

where ABC is the symbol of the country that is the author of the proposal, 25 is the number of the document in which the proposal will be published and 3 is the serial number of the proposal within that document. The three-letter code and document number will be included by the Secretariat. However, the numbering of each proposal will be assigned by the online system when submitting each proposal.

On the basis of the proposals and contributions received by the deadline, BDT will allocate the documents based on the topics identified by the submitting administration in order to facilitate the discussions at WTDC-10.

Owing to the limited duration of the Conference, substantive debate should take precedence over the systematic presentation of individual proposals. For ease of referencing during the discussions, the secretariat will prepare a temporary document listing all the proposals and contributions with cross-references to the different items on the agenda. Member States are strongly encouraged not to submit new proposals during the Conference.

In accordance with Resolution 1 of WTDC-06, a proposal should not exceed five (5) pages, and should be submitted to the Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau.

In the case of a more detailed proposal that significantly exceeds the length limit, an executive summary should be submitted. Only the executive summary will be translated if submitted within the time limit. The detailed version of the proposal will only be available online and in the original language.

The opening ceremony will take place on 24 May 2010. It will be preceded by a meeting of heads of delegation.