|
The World Telecommunication Development Conference
2010 (WTDC-10) is an event of exceptional importance
for ITU. It is my great pleasure to welcome
participants to Hyderabad. I am delighted that this
conference is taking place in India, a country of great
innovation and inspiration.
WTDC-10 is an essential step in assessing the
progress achieved in implementing the ambitious action
plan we launched in 2006 in Doha, Qatar. The
foundations of a global information society have been
laid. The conference in Hyderabad will adopt a declaration
and an action plan that will pave the way for
building on those foundations to ensure that the information
society is truly global and accessible to all.
The ITU Council, which met from 13 to 22 April
2010, set the stage not only for WTDC-10, but also
for another major ITU event — the Plenipotentiary
Conference, which will be held in Guadalajara,
Mexico, from 4 to 22 October 2010. We were very
honoured to have as Chairman of this year’s session of
the Council the distinguished Deputy Director General
of India’s Department of Telecommunications, Mr
R. N. Jha. As was stressed by the Council, the outcomes
of WTDC-10 will be crucial for the Guadalajara
Conference and for ITU’s own strategic plan for the
coming years.
With close to 5 billion mobile cellular subscriptions
expected worldwide at the end of 2010, and
almost 2 billion people now having access to the
Internet, we can say that we have made tremendous
progress. But a lot remains to be done. In particular,
we must bring affordable broadband access within
reach of people everywhere.
I strongly believe that the public and private sectors
will work together — as they did for the creation
of mobile cellular networks — to roll out the necessary
infrastructure and services to bring broadband
to all the people of the world. Broadband networks
can quickly pay for themselves, by making savings
through the more efficient provision of essential services
such as health care, education, power, water,
transport and e-government. This is why ITU, with the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), established the Broadband
Commission for Digital Development, which was
launched during the WSIS Forum on 10 May 2010.
The Broadband Commission is chaired by
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Carlos Slim
Helú, Honorary Lifetime Chairman of Grupo Carso.
Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, and I, as
Secretary-General of ITU, will act as the Commission’s
vice-chairmen. The Commission has the full support of
the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.
As we promote broadband, we must also make
sure that people are well-equipped, through human
capacity building, to take full advantage of what this
technology offers. Together, we can and must build
the future on broadband.
|