ITALY

STATEMENT BY MR LUIGI VIMERCATI
UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE

Italy, one of the founding members of the ITU and one of the main contributor to its budget, wishes to express its appreciation for the stabilizing role that the International Telecommunication Union has exerted in a continuously changing telecommunication environment worldwide.
Telecommunications are and will continue to be a key factor in the desire of humanity to communicate and to exchange ideas, contributing to the economic and social development of people.

Whilst ITU appears to have worked satisfactorily in the past, the overall structure of ITU in our view now needs changes suitable to face the new telecommunication challenges.

The competition in the standardization field needs the enhancement of the actual successful working methods by means of the adoption of more flexible tools able to attract more and more the private sector and universities for new technologies.

Working methods and structure of the development sector need also to be reviewed in order to have more dynamic actions, to provide an adequate regional presence with more resources and a closer cooperation and enhanced synergy with other regional and UN organizations. Projects must be finalized to the effective improvement of local network and services, verifying that the actions put in place by the development sector are effective to the technical improvement and to the creation of a management able to take directly advantage of the efforts of the ITU, avoiding unfruitful expenses.

The implementation of the results of World Summit on the Information Society, where ITU has to play a key role, needs the adoption of a dynamic structure crossing all ITU in order to coordinate activities to fulfil.

We must work together to implement the strategic plan of the ITU for the next challenging years, to confirm the leading role of ITU in shaping the future of the ICT community and the converging world of telecommunications. In order to achieve this goal, we believe that attention must also be given to optimizing the use of resources within ITU.

In our opinion, the main challenge for the future of telecommunications will be the convergence of technical platforms, since it will make difficult to distinguish services with un-harmonized regulations (e.g for video, data, traditional telecommunications services). This evolution will constitute a major challenge for those involved in providing the common technical platform, the services and the regulations. The new rules should allow an improved worldwide connectivity, leaving intact the national interests and making a reality the reduction of the existing digital divide, thus allowing at the end a better choice of services at a lower cost for the end users.

ITU should continue to play a key role in this trend for the future of the worldwide telecommunications, acting as reference organization for the development of global harmonized standards and provide a forum to encourage the implementation of new ideas and technical solutions.

Italy is fully engaged at national and international level, and within the European Union, in the application and diffusion of advanced technologies and services, including e-government, digital broadband and internet, and in assisting countries in the reduction and elimination of the digital divide.

Italy has always contributed to the activities of the Union, both in financial and technical terms, and this is why Italy is proposing its candidature as member of the ITU Council for Region B. This engagement takes also the form of the participation of its experts in the studies carried out by the Study Groups and with the necessary support within the Union's secretariat.

In this respect Italy is offering its contribution by presenting Ing. Fabio Bigi, a long time servant of ITU and former deputy director, TSB, as candidate to the post of Director of TSB.

In thanking in advance for your support to our candidatures, we would like to conclude our statement by reiterating our conviction that telecommunications will continue to play a key role in the worldwide economic and technical development, with the key contribution of ITU, thanks also to its qualified and large public and private membership.