Distinguished colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you all very much for joining us here today for the opening of the 2013 Global Symposium for Regulators and the Global Regulators and Industry Dialogue.

This is a very important event for the global telecommunications regulatory community – and an equally important event for the development of information and communication technologies worldwide.

It is the decisions that are made by national regulators – of which there are now over 160 worldwide – that shape the market conditions for the growth of information and communication services.

These decisions are vital in helping create an environment that will foster healthy competition and ensure that consumers get the best deal possible, in terms of pricing, network coverage and choice of service packages.

And these regulatory decisions are equally important in ensuring there is an attractive climate for private sector investment, so that operators and infrastructure builders have the right incentives to invest and innovate to create new networks and services.

As the United Nations specialized agency for information and communications technology, ITU is committed to helping connect all the world’s people. That commitment saw us launch this important symposium just over 10 years ago, and I am very happy to see that under the Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau, Mr Brahima Sanou, this event continues to go from strength to strength, growing in influence worldwide as THE single unmissable annual gathering of the global regulatory community. It is testament to the success of the efforts of Mr Sanou and his team, and of our Polish counterparts, that this event in Warsaw is our most successful GSR ever, with over 700 participants representing 85% of the global regulatory community.

Here in Poland, you have been working very hard, and very effectively, to create a positive climate for ICT growth, thanks to the active efforts of the UKE. We will hear more about that in just a moment from the UKE President Madame Magdalena Gaj.

But let me take this opportunity to hail the success of UKE in positioning Poland at the forefront of new technologies like broadband mobile, which will be such a vital bridge to the emerging, technology-based Knowledge Societies.

Just a few minutes ago, at the GSR Opening Ceremony, I spoke about the importance of achieving the same explosion in Internet as we have achieved in mobile.

For us to do this, governments need to put broadband at the top of their national agenda. I know that here in Poland UKE has been making broadband a key pillar of your country’s economic development, and I commend Mme Gaj’s vision, and her hard work in implementing that vision.

I also spoke earlier about the importance of affordability. For us to truly harness the benefits of ICTs across all sectors of society, we need to ensure that as many people as possible have access.

As you will see from the market overview prepared by the ITU team as part of your press kit, Poland’s mobile and broadband prices are among the most affordable in the world – another testament to the effectiveness of UKE’s work as national regulator.

I will let the Director of our Telecommunication Development Bureau, Mr Sanou, speak a little more about the market trends here in Poland, but for now, it gives me great pleasure to hand the floor to my esteemed colleague, Madame Magdalena Gaj, who is doing ITU the honour of serving as Chair of this 13th GSR.