Your Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa, President of the Republic of Sri Lanka
Hon D M Jayaratne, Prime Minister
Hon Jeewan Kumaratunga, Minister of Posts and Telecoms
Hon Duminda Dissanayake, Deputy Minister of Posts and Telecommunications
Mr. Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President and the Chairman of the
Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka
Mr. Patrick Mwesigwa, Executive Director for Uganda Communications Commission
and Chairman of CTO Council
Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, the Chief Executive Officer of CTO
Mr. Anusha Palpita, the Director General of Telecommunications Regulatory
Commission, Sri Lanka
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Colleagues and friends
It is a great pleasure to speak to you at this CTO Forum and it is an enormous
privilege to be here again on the beautiful island of Sri Lanka. I wish to
extend greetings from the ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré, and thank his
Excellency The President for once again honouring us with his presence at the
opening of a join ITU and CTO event.
It was with equal pleasure that I was here last year for the first ever joint
CTO and ITU event: the Forum on Next Generation Networks. Thanks to the
excellent organization, facilities and hospitality of the Telecommunications
Regulatory Commission and its staff it was an extremely successful event. So
thanks go once again to the TRC.
It is fitting that we have returned to Colombo for another step forward in ITU
and CTO collaboration: incorporating a number of presentations on ITU activities
within the annual CTO Forum. I very much hope this will be a model for future
events.
ITU’s mission is to connect the world.
Last Thursday and Friday during a meeting here of the Commonwealth ITU Group a
number of Commonwealth Member States, including the newest member of the
Commonwealth, Rwanda, adopted 32 Common Objectives for the forthcoming ITU
Plenipotentiary Conference in Mexico, as well as agreeing to support the
Commonwealth candidatures for that conference, which includes for the first time
the candidature of Sri Lanka to the ITU Council. Commonwealth coordination has
proved to be particularly effective in the ITU, and so my best wishes to Sri
Lanka for its success in this election.
Later today we will be presenting some of the main issues currently being dealt
with in ITU, including our efforts to increase the participation of developing
countries in the standardization process - this is essential to help reduce the
wider digital divide – and our efforts to address concerns on conformity and
interoperability.
Also on the agenda are the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs):
the international treaty that governs all international telecommunications
between countries.
The ITRs prescribe such issues as: traffic flows between operators, quality of
service, international routing, charging, accounting and billing between
operators, and they established the framework for the development of the
Internet.
They have remained unchanged for 22 years, while the industry they serve has
certainly not. Mobile communications and Internet connectivity have grown beyond
what could possibly have been imagined in 1988.
Clearly the time to review this international treaty is well overdue.
This will be the subject of a World Conference on International
Telecommunications scheduled for November 2012. This conference will adopt a new
treaty to replace the Melbourne Treaty that has lasted over 20 years. I will be
providing more information on this critical issue for the ICT sector and all
Member States.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
All the citizens of the world should have access to the Internet and for this to
be effective it means broadband access. New broadband applications and services
will stimulate growth, innovation and economic development. Without it we will
not achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals.
For this reason ITU, together with UNESCO, launched a global, top-level
Broadband Commission to work on common strategies to harness the power of
broadband and accelerate progress on the UN MDGs.
The Co-Chairs of the Commission, His Excellency Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda
and renowned businessman, Mr. Carlos Slim Helu, of Mexico, will be reporting to
the UN Secretary-General on 19 September at the UN MDG Summit in New York.
I am sure you will join me in wishing this Commission a great success.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to commend Sri Lanka for its
recognition of the vital role the ICT sector can play in expanding its economy
and bringing the benefits of the information society to its citizens. The rapid
steps forward that have been made in the relatively short post-conflict era, the
energy and enthusiasm of its leaders and people, surely point to a tremendous
potential for it to achieve its aim of becoming the “Wonder of Asia”. Great
credit is rightly placed on His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa for this
achievement, and I am sure we all wish him well in continuing this effort.
For my part, I look forward to a continuing close collaboration with my friends
and colleagues in Sri Lanka and in the CTO and I wish you stimulating and
enjoyable discussions over the next three days.
Thank you for your attention. |
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