INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION UNION

OPENING REMARKS BY Mr YOSHIO UTSUMI
SECRETARY-GENERAL

Your excellency Mr. Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey,
Your excellency Mr. Yildirim, Minister of Transport of Turkey,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my pleasure and honour to welcome you to this beautiful resort town of Antalya, for the 17th Plenipotentiary Conference of the ITU.

An Indian friend told me that if you glance over your shoulder for one last look at the majestic Taj Mahal, you will visit the Taj Mahal again. I was informed that it was built by artisans and designers from Turkey. Those Turkish people must have encrypted a magic formula into it.

Hence, hoping to come back again, I glanced over my shoulder at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul during WRC 2000, and in 2002 I was back again in Istanbul for WTDC.

When that conference finished, I glanced over my shoulder once again at the land of Turkey through the window of the airplane back to Geneva and now I am here in Turkey once again.

For both of these major conferences, the Turkish administration was efficient as an organiser and generous as a host. Therefore, it was with much appreciation that I accepted Turkey’s kind offer to host this Plenipotentiary Conference in Antalya and we come here with confidence and the knowledge that we are in very capable hands.

It was at the Minneapolis PleniPot of 1998 that you placed your faith in me by electing me to the august office of the Secretary-General. I was very honoured that you reaffirmed that faith in Marrakesh.

Eight years is a long time, and much has happened in these tumultuous years.

We have experienced the dot com boom and bust, and we have seen the power of the internet reaching the shores and cities of every country, government monopolies bracing for private competition, analogue networks changing to digital networks and the fast all-encompassing growth of mobile telephony. Traumatic events and natural calamities have made us focus on the importance of the role of communications in disaster mitigation and relief.

In all my endeavours, my unwavering focus, my unflinching belief, has been towards achieving the Union’s goal of development of telecommunications for one and all. But as the noted scholar Kahlil Gibran said ‘Believing is a fine thing, but putting those beliefs into execution is a test of strength.’

And the past few years have been a real test of my inner strength and beliefs.
The journey from 1998 to 2006 has been arduous, a road of many twists and turns but I have personal satisfaction in the acknowledgement that I have come a long way towards the pledges I took and the promises I made at Minneapolis in 1998.

Since Minneapolis, more than two billion new users have been added to the world’s networks, most of them using mobile phones, and more than 800 million users have been connected to the internet. ITU had anticipated and helped create this change, for instance, in setting aside spectrum, or by developing interoperability standards.

Today, telecommunications lie at the heart of a global ICT business which is valued in terms of trillions of Dollars and contributes more than 7 per cent of global wealth.

During my tenure as Secretary-General, ITU has been in the forefront of developing standards and coordinating policy issues on new services, be it the IMT 2000 standard for 3G mobile or the spread of IP Telephony, Digital TV, and next generation networks, to name but a few. ITU continues to be at the cutting edge of technological change.

We have provided a boost to private sector participation. In the last two years, more than 200 new Sector Members and Associates have enrolled in the ITU’s activities and since 1998 there has been a 20% increase.
We have improved the efficiency of our work - by eliminating the backlogs in the processing of satellite notifications, and in reforming the business model of TELECOM.

We have also succeeded in absorbing additional requirements from the membership without any increase in the size of the contributory unit. In total, efficiency measures of more than CHF 75 million have been implemented since 1998, making it possible to undertake more work with fewer resources.

ITU has initiated and successfully implemented operational planning, results-based budgeting and time-tracking.

The highlight, and the feather in the cap of ITU during my stewardship, was the stellar role played successfully by the Union in the World Summit on the Information Society. This was a pivotal and singular event. For the first time, world leaders, responding to our call, came together with Civil Society and Business leaders and pledged to build a more equitable, just information society by 2015.

The WSIS helped to highlight the challenges raised by the Information Society. It brought to the fore the urgent need for policy coordination and the establishment of international policy for Information Society issues, in areas like cybersecurity, Internet Governance, data and privacy protection, countering spam and in financing ICTs for development. The Summit also brought together new players, new people and new interests.

All these activities have enhanced the public image and awareness of ITU not only among global citizens but also among many Heads of Government, some of whom have graced the ITU headquarters by their visits and complemented us for the role we have played in creating a global information society for all humanity.

Despite ITU’s leading role, WSIS decided that it was necessary to create a separate Forum to discuss the issue of Internet Governance, as ITU is not sufficiently open to these new players, and not fully flexible in its working methods to accommodate new issues. ITU’s traditional style of working—through Study Groups and technical standardization—was not considered appropriate, and a more flexible response is needed.

Nevertheless this Summit has given ITU the opportunity to position itself in the vanguard of the Information Society. ITU was entrusted by world leaders to act as the overall facilitator for the implementation of the Action Plan as a whole, as well as a facilitator for specific action lines such as infrastructure and cybersecurity.

But in assuming that role, we must first earn the respect of the international community. We must demonstrate that ITU is no longer just a “technical agency” that “makes the phones work” or “records satellite filings”. We must show that ITU has a mandate and the capacity to engage more broadly in the development of ICTs and in their use for the benefit of humanity.

In the implementation phase of WSIS, our attention must shift to using ICTs as tools to build a world in which everyone can create, access, utilise and share information and knowledge; to realise their ambition of being a productive global citizen.

I would be failing in my duty if I did not mention the tremendous support I have received from the membership and the staff of the Union. It is of critical importance that the Union speaks, and acts, as a single body, not as three separate Sectors or a loose collection of study groups. In this respect, it was only the high office of the Secretary-General, elected by the membership, which could represent the Union, and respond to new challenges, with strong political leadership and flexibility.

I thank you all for the support I have received while in this office. But I would like, in particular, to mention and appreciate the key role that has been played for the Union by the Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU), by helping the Secretary-General in executing the functions of the office, as set out in the Constitution and Convention, in organising the WSIS and in helping ITU to adapt to the changing environment.

It was the SPU that helped in the development of a common understanding of the implications of voice over IP by organizing the 2001 World Telecommunication Policy Forum, which resulted in the spread of telephony on IP-based networks. It was also SPU initiatives and its focus on cybersecurity and countering spam that enabled ITU to be invited to play the role of facilitator for action line C5 on cybersecurity in implementing the WSIS plan of action.

I believe that ITU should prioritise this area and focus its efforts in the coming period on its role as one of the leading agencies for the overall facilitation of WSIS implementation. To lead the information revolution, ITU must work as a policy-centred development organization.

This Plenipotentiary is faced with momentous decisions which will affect the lives of all and sundry around the world.

The birth pangs of the Information revolution are over. I strongly feel that if we do not act properly we will lose our relevance in the growth and blossoming of the information revolution and the future of ITU would be in jeopardy.

We are at a critical juncture where we must make the right decisions, right choices, to make our Union the strong cornerstone—unobtrusive but always there to act—as an anchor of the multi-stakeholder development of the information society.

We must act with vision and clarity, at times forsaking our narrow interests for the broader good of mankind. We must evolve a consensus for the vision of tomorrow and to realise our ambitions, our goals. It is imperative that we continue forward with greater momentum on the path of change ITU has embarked on since I took office eight years ago.

The world is changing and ITU must change with it. We have to decide: are we to continue our archaic dogmatic traditions or relinquish them to soar with the pragmatic winds of change sweeping across the globe.

In the next three weeks, I implore you to be bold and progressive in your decisions, which are necessary in making ITU not only relevant in the Information Society, but also a vital cog in harnessing the benefits of ICTs for the vast multitudes of the world. Let us together make ITU the universal flag bearer to build a more just and equitable Information Society.
Thank you.