Mr Vice Premier,

Your excellencies, 

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is my honour to welcome you to ITU Telecom Asia 2000.

Today is the first day of a very important week. It is a week in which the future shape of the industry in the Asia-Pacific region will be defined.

The Telecom event we are inaugurating today is a demonstration of the new technologies available today and tomorrow. It is also a world forum for exchanging wisdom and experience for telecommunications development.

Between now and next Saturday, when the event closes, you will be able to see the largest Exhibition the ITU has ever organized for the Asia-Pacific region. For the first time ever at a regional Telecom event we have some 500 exhibitors who have taken over 23,000 square metres of net exhibition space.

We have also put together an unparalleled Forum. This starts tomorrow morning and features close to 250 speakers, moderators and panellists from more than 30 countries. At the Forum we will have the opportunity to shape the future of telecommunications development across the region.

It is important that we shape it with care. Because telecommunications can transform and improve the lives of all people. And because the lack of communications facilities will do the opposite.

Telecommunications is not simply a commercial enterprise. It is not just a commodity that can be bought and sold like any other merchandise. It is a public service. In today’s world of mega-mergers and fluctuating stock prices this can sometimes be forgotten.

Telecommunications services underpin not just the global economy but also the lives of us all. From the largest corporation to the smallest farm, many miles from its nearest neighbour, access to communications facilities provides a life-line.

In fact affordable access to communications services is essential to social and economic existence in the 21^st century. It is essential to our cultural and even our individual existence. Those who log on to the Internet have access to a whole world of information and knowledge; those who cannot log on are left behind.

Who today would renounce the opportunity of being able to stay in touch with far away loved ones? Who would reject the chance of being able to know what is going on – beyond the line of sight, and beyond hearing distance? Who would deprive themselves of instant access to the vast accumulated knowledge of human kind? We may not want to take advantage of new technologies all of the time – but their availability has become essential in our lives.

Governments and regulators have a duty to make sure that telecommunications services are available to everyone. But we in the telecommunications industry have a responsibility to make sure that access to telecommunications services is priced reasonably, making not just the technology, but also the services, available and affordable to all sectors of society.

In 1984 the ITU published a report called "The Missing Link". The report suggested that "by the early part of the next century virtually the whole of mankind should be brought within easy reach of a telephone". Which means, effectively, within walking distance.

New technologies now make this an achievable goal. Indeed it is a goal that will soon be realised – both through the impact of new technologies and through the introduction of the principles of market mechanisms in telecommunications.

Technologies such as mobile telephony, satellite communications, and the shift from analogue to digital technologies not only mean convenience but also dramatically lower costs. Lower costs for building infrastructure. Lower running costs for operators. And lower prices for subscribers.

And lower costs mean greater access. In the last three years more than 400 million people  have signed up for a mobile cellular telephone. Compare that figure to the 243 million main telephone lines that were installed in the first one hundred years of telephone history.

The communications advances of the last ten years, including major breakthroughs in satellite, wireless and fibre-optic technology, together with the introduction of private capital in liberalized markets mean that our goal – perhaps for the very first time – is a realistic one.

Now we are on the road to achieving this goal it is time to set ourselves a new goal.

That goal is: by the end of the decade, virtually the whole of mankind should be brought within easy reach of modern means of telecommunications, including the Internet.

Once we have established telephone connections, this goal will not be as difficult to achieve as the first one. Giving everyone access to the wealth of information available online, is not only a matter of justice, but is vital. The move from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy has generated enormous wealth, and raised our standard of living throughout the world. The same quantum leap will be experienced in the transition to a global information economy. Everyone must be given access to the tools of this economy if they are to enjoy its benefits.

The growing realisation that this is true has been manifest this year, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

In July, in fact, the Kyushu-Okinawa G8 Summit issued the important Okinawa Charter on the Global Information Society. This called for the establishment of a Digital Opportunity Taskforce, the first meeting of which was held in Tokyo just last week. In this respect I am pleased to see that Japan has announced a comprehensive co-operation package amounting to some 15 billion US dollars.

The Asia-Pacific Summit on the Information Society was also held in Tokyo last month. At the Summit the Ministers for information and communications of member countries of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity – the APT – adopted the Tokyo Declaration on “Asia-Pacific Renaissance through ICT in the 21st Century”. The Declaration includes means to bridge the digital divide and make the most of digital opportunities, ensuring a sound information-based society is established which respects the diversity of the Asia-Pacific region.

Affordable Universal Access – not just to basic telephony, but to the Internet – is a realisable dream. Let us continue, together, towards realising that dream of digital opportunity here in Hong Kong, this week. Let us commit ourselves to making it happen. This is not an impossible task.

Thank you.