Closing Address 

Ambassador Dougan,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to thank you very much for inviting me to be with you today.

I arrived from Geneva yesterday evening, and will be in the United States for one week.  The main purpose of my visit is to raise the profile of the ITU, and to persuade people to support it more strongly.  I have to convince them the ITU is so important and so powerful that they must participate actively, if they want to sell telecommunications products or services in the global marketplace.

To do this, I will have to make myself big, and talk loudly.  This may be difficult.  Since taking office as Secretary-General of the ITU, I have not grown - not even an inch.  Maybe my workload is too heavy!  I hope the Washington environment will help me grow.

For some time, I have been convinced that one of the most important problems facing the international community, in the area of telecommunications, is to coordinate the policies and regulations of different countries and regions.

This is necessary because of the great changes that are taking place in the telecommunications environment.  In my opinion these changes, which you know very well, require new approaches to international cooperation.  I would like to briefly outline why I think this is so and make some proposals.

The Telecommunications Revolution

The first change I want to discuss is the development of global systems designed to carry multimedia information services.

In the past, we did not have global systems.  Instead, international telecommunication services were provided through cooperative arrangements between national systems.  Each of these systems operated according to its own rules and regulations.

We are entering a new era in which many of the most important telecommunication systems will be truly global.  They will provide services directly to end customers in many countries.  Some of these systems will be accessible from any place in the world.

These global systems are being built on a scale which far exceeds the systems of the past.  For example, it has been estimated that the terrestrial and satellite components of third generation wireless systems will have 2.5 billion customers by the year 2015.  After 120 years, the telephone system has only one-third that number.

Equally impressive developments are taking place under the sea.  The builders of the new generation of fibre optic submarine cable networks no longer talk about mega-bits or even giga-bits.  Tera-bit transmission rates — the capacity to transmit trillions of bits of information per second -- are the new benchmark in this rapidly-growing business. 

How much information is a tera-bit?  Let me give you an idea.  The last ITU World Radiocommunication Conference produced 25 million pages of documents.  It would take less than half a second to transmit this information at tera-bit speed.

Even though these systems are global, most service providers and customers will still be citizens of different countries.  These systems will therefore have to operate according to different national laws and regulations.  Without coordination, these differences can add to the cost of business, slow the development of services, and delay the many benefits global systems can bring.

My first proposal is that it will be necessary to coordinate policies and regulations for global systems, in order to get the full benefits of the telecommunications revolution.

The Information Revolution

Second, I would like to talk about effects of the convergence of communications and information technology.

In the past, the main purpose of telecommunication systems was to carry voice traffic.  Networks were designed for this purpose, and the telecommunications business was based on the revenues from voice services.

In the very near future, their main purpose of telecommunication systems will be to carry multimedia information services.  On many of the most important international routes — for example between Japan and the United States, and across the North Atlantic -- data traffic already exceeds voice.  The Internet accounts for much of this traffic, and it hardly existed five years ago.

In the voice era, telecommunications policy and regulation were based on a strict separation of responsibility for carriage and content.  Carriers were regulated as public utilities.  Content providers were either not regulated, or regulated according to cultural principles.

As a result of convergence, it is becoming more difficult to distinguish clearly between carriage and content functions.  The services provided by Internet gateway operators are a good example of this trend.

The transformation of voice networks into information networks raises many new issues for policy makers and regulators, in telecommunications and other domains.

Dealing with the problems raised by convergence is complicated because different countries have different legal frameworks and different cultural traditions.  What is legal and socially acceptable in one country may not be in another.

In spite of these differences, because services like the Internet are available worldwide, we have to find global solutions to these problems.  This does not mean that telecommunication regulators should become involved in content regulation. But someone should solve these problems.

The Market Revolution

Third, I would like to talk about the effects of the uneven pace of market liberalization for telecommunication services.

Over the past fifteen years, many countries have liberalized their domestic markets.  In addition, as a result of negotiations in the World Trade Organization, 72 countries have agreed to open their markets to foreign competition.

However, we cannot forget that there are 116 ITU member countries who have not done so.  Although they represent only a small proportion of the current global telecommunications market, these countries contain 45% of the world’s population.  They therefore represent a very important market for the future, particularly for technologies such as third generation wireless.

There are a number of important problems that arise in relations between countries which have liberalized their markets and those which have not.

Issues related to the reform of the international accounting and settlement system are one important example of these problems.  GMPCS is another.  These systems are the product of competition in liberalized markets.  Yet the major need for the services they provide is in unliberalized markets.  Unless GMPCS system operators and service providers can access these markets, they will not succeed.

In these cases and many others, the need for coordination between countries with liberalized and unliberalized markets is clear.

Ambassador Dougan,
Ladies and gentlemen

I have described the problems being created by the big changes that are taking place in telecommunications.

What is the best way to solve these problems, so that the world can get maximum benefit from these changes?

One solution would be to try to solve these problems through bilateral negotiations.  This is the approach that most Americans believe is best for them.  However, this would be an inefficient and time-consuming process.  Moreover, it is often criticized as unfair, because of the imbalance in power between different countries.

In my opinion, the best approach to solving these problems is multilateral.

The ITU is a unique multilateral organization.  Our membership includes almost all governments and more than 550 service providers and manufacturers from the telecommunications, information technology and broadcasting industries.

The ITU really is a “Cosmos Club for the Information Age”!

The main job of the ITU is to organize meetings where our Members can discuss problems and find solutions.  We have been doing this for a very long time — ever since the time of your Civil War.  We have a great deal of technical expertise.  And we work very hard.  Last year the ITU held more than 1000 meeting days!

The ITU is sometimes criticized for being a club.  But anyone with an interest in telecommunications can join.  At our Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis last year, we made it easier than ever to become a member — much easier than to become of member of the Cosmos Club!

A number of years ago, I proposed the creation of the World Telecommunication Policy Forum.  It has proven to be a useful forum where government and the private sector can exchange information on policy and regulatory issues, in order to develop shared opinions.

The Minneapolis Plenipotentiary Conference decided that the ITU should continue to hold such events.  I therefore welcome your ideas on suitable topics. Some have suggested a regulatory framework for IMT-2000 as a possible subject.  Others have proposed Internet related policy issues.  The coming ITU Council meeting will have a preliminary discussion on the theme of the next policy forum, which will likely take place in 2001.

The creation of the policy forum was a great success.  But it is only suitable for dealing with world-wide problems which have reached a certain level of maturity. There are many urgent and complicated issues which the ITU members would like help in resolving.  Unfortunately, the traditional ITU mechanisms have become too large and too bureaucratic to address such issues in and efficient and timely fashion.

Therefore, I plan to launch a series of new initiatives to help solve urgent policy problems.

The purpose of these initiatives will be to set up several small, informal groups of policy sherpas.  Each group will include the best experts in the world on the issue to be studied.  The experts will freely discuss the issue and propose solutions which will be provided to the members of the ITU club for their consideration.

Unless we use a light, rapid and flexible approach of this kind, I am afraid the ITU will be unable to reply to the requests of its membership for helping in solving urgent policy problems.

To begin with, the topics to be studied by these  groups will include: re-examination of the current International Telecommunication Regulations; the possible need for a Memorandum of Understanding on the mutual recognition of digital authentication procedures; and the feasibility of holding a world summit of the information society.  These are topics which ITU members have asked us to address.

One of the most exciting things about working in telecommunications is that things seldom if ever develop exactly as planned.  I understand that the Cosmos Club was established  in 1878, and that Alexander Graham Bell was one of its founders.  This was shortly after he  patented his “electrical speech machine” and demonstrated that long distance telephony was possible.

As you may know, Bell was actually trying to develop an improved telegraph, and invented the telephone almost by accident.  It is also true that he originally marketed his invention as a means for broadcasting musical performances.  It was only after this initiative failed that the telephone started to gain acceptance as a means of long distance voice communication.

This is sometimes cited as an example of how inventors fail to understand the practical consequences of their work.  Today, however, we know that Bell was right.

We now can see that the dominance of voice telephony was only an interlude in the history of telecommunications.  Today’s multimedia terminals make it possible to experience sound, music and images — everything Bell would have wanted, and more.  Tomorrow’s third generation wireless handsets will make this experience possible anywhere in the world.

In developing policies for the communications revolution that is underway , we must be sure to leave as much room as possible for individual genius of the kind Bell displayed.  Imagination and the freedom to invent are finally what communication is all about.  Above all it is these kinds of values that we must encourage and protect.  

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