Mr Toshiyuki Yamada, Secretary-General of Asia-Pacific Telecommunity
Mr Chasik Leem, President of the Telecommunication Technology Association, Republic of Korea
Distinguished colleagues
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning and welcome to this ITU Regional Standardization Forum for the Asia-Pacific Region in the vibrant city of Bangkok.
I would like to begin by thanking Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT), both for hosting this event and for the tremendous support APT offers ITU by coordinating regional contributions to our work and organizing joint events, especially through the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity Standardization Program (ASTAP).
I would also like to express my gratitude to the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) for its support in organizing this forum, and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning of the Republic of Korea, for its generous contribution to our “Bridging the Standards Gap” (BSG) Fund which helps us organize events such as this one.
The Asia-Pacific region is developing rapidly, and information and communication technology is inspiring its economic growth.
I am well aware of the challenges the APT faces in meeting the needs of its diverse membership. Some members count themselves among the most wired countries in the world, home to highly advanced ICT infrastructures. Other countries’ ICT industries are expanding fast, experiencing the high growth rates characteristic of emerging economies.
So I applaud APT for how it has encouraged intra-regional cooperation and promote technological advances.
International standards reduce technical barriers to trade. They create a level playing field that enables companies from emerging economies to access regional and global markets. And by increasing competition, standards lead to higher quality and more affordable products.
Conformance with international standards enlarges common markets, expanding the scope of opportunity for all. It increases the probability of interoperability and reduces the risk of poor quality products entering the market. This is why ITU has implemented a conformance and interoperability programme, the second pillar of which is to conduct interoperability events, one of which ITU and APT is jointly organising here this week.
A core ITU mandate is to broker consensus on the international technical standards that supply the building blocks to the global ICT ecosystem. You cannot make a phone call, watch a video or surf the web without engaging with a multitude of ITU standards.
Increasing the participation of developing countries in the work of ITU’s Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the foundational pillars of our mission as an organization.
The participation of developing countries in our work ensures that ITU-T produces standards to meet their particular needs. Participation is also a means to understand ITU standards in greater depth, leading to more informed choices of standards and knowledge of how to implement them most effectively.
As companies and administrations increase their participation in international standardization activities, so the benefits of this participation will become apparent. I am pleased to say that since 2006 over 40 developing countries have started participating in ITU-T.
Under the banner of our BSG programme, we have introduced a range of measures to assist the participation of developing countries.
We have increased the number of meetings in the regions.
We have created regional study groups.
And we offer online ‘remote participation’ for most of our meetings.
This allows delegates to avoid costly airfares and hotel expenses. Last year we held over 1500 meetings with remote participation, enjoyed by over 8500 delegates from over 80 countries.
Companies in certain developing countries are now able to join ITU for a greatly reduced membership fee, down from CHF 32,000 per year to just CHF 4,000.
We offer fellowships to assist delegates’ participation in all ten ITU-T Study Groups. Some of the countries represented here are eligible for such fellowships, and I encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity.
We have also established a new category of membership for academic and research institutes, and universities in all developing countries are able to join ITU for the very modest fee of CHF 2,000 per year.
Since this new academic membership category opened its doors in 2011, 64 institutions have joined ITU, of which 46 are members of ITU-T.
The BSG programme also drives the development of training courses on ITU’s standards and working methods, and capacity-building workshops are funded to a great extent by our BSG Fund. I take this opportunity to thank the contributors to this fund: Korea Communications Commission, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Nokia Siemens Networks.
Your support is highly appreciated.
My colleague, Xiaoya Yang, will speak in greater detail on our BSG programme later today. I encourage you to work with us to ensure that the programme develops in such a way that it continues to meet your needs.
A recent achievement has been the launch of a publication laying out “Guidelines to Establish a National Standardization Secretariat for ITU-T”.
In a recent study, supported by the Korean government, we discovered that the lack of a national body to marshal standardization activity is a major obstacle to the expansion of a country’s standardization capabilities.
Our new publication provides guidelines for all levels of engagement with ITU-T, from basic involvement limited by resources, to intensive engagement in all aspects of the work. These Guidelines are a key focus of today’s Forum as the subject of a dedicated session on our agenda.
It is through events such as this one that ITU-T builds new relationships and welcomes new participants to our work. I particularly look forward to the presentations we will receive on unique experiences in ICT standardization, which will certainly benefit the ITU-T standardization process and the services we offer our members in the Asia-Pacific region.
I wish you all a most productive and enjoyable forum.
