BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin was a featured speaker and panelist in Discussion Track 2: Technology, Business, Policy, Regulatory, and Data Landscapes in New Light, at this year's SAMENA Leaders Summit.
She joined a group of leading speakers, including Scott Gegenheimer, CEO of Operations for Zain, Kuwait, and a member of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development; Maxim Nartov, Business Development Director at Nexign, Russia; Amir AlGibreen, VP of Regulatory Transformation at STC, Saudi Arabia; and Dr Verena Weber, Head of CIPSU at the OECD.
Led by moderator Mark Spelman, Head of Thought Leadership at the World Economic Forum, discussants looked at how the ICT stakeholder community, together with industry verticals, could work collaboratively to shape the coming decade and set the right course for accelerated development at local and regional levels. With a focus on the transformational power and potential of 5G, the panel examined what the tech, business and regulatory landscape might look like over the next decade, what challenges will need to be overcome to reach the goal of universal affordable connectivity, and what governance models will be required for data to ensure its safe and secure use.
Ms Bogdan-Martin told the audience that the COVID crisis had brought the world to a major inflection point. "With 5G we have an amazing technology with unprecedented potential to transform our societies. And at the same time, those of us advocating for global connectivity suddenly have the undivided attention of governments all around the world," she said. "I think for the first time many world leaders are really understanding the power and potential of digital – and perhaps more importantly, what a huge disadvantage it is to be unconnected. This gives us a once-in-a-lifetime chance to harness that political will and build government and industry momentum around a global 'big dig' to get high-speed networks in place as fast as possible."
Speaking to question on the priorities for her Bureau in the post-COVID world, she noted that while infrastructure deployment is critical, bringing the kind of 'meaningful connectivity' to communities that would transform people's job opportunities, health and well-being, education, and social participation will be about much more than getting towers and boxes in place.
"ITU figures show that 93% of the world's population live within reach of a 3G mobile broadband signal, yet only just over half of those people are using these networks," she observed, citing BDT's broad portfolio of complementary activities designed to tackle barriers to connectivity on all major fronts."
"My team is working now to reinforce and expand efforts around digital skills development, particularly for marginalized populations and communities including women and girls, rural dwellers, disempowered youth, and displaced persons. And with an estimated 1.5 billion children out of school because of COVID, ensuring that all young people have access to the extraordinary power of online learning has also become a major new focus, which has coalesced around an exciting new partnership with UNICEF on Giga."
"The Giga vision is to connect every school on the planet to the internet, and every child to information, opportunity and choice. We're moving quickly to get our first round of pilot countries up and running, with an ambitious global roll-out schedule and active recruitment of partner organizations."
She added that harnessing the power of innovation needs to be at the centre of efforts, noting ITU's new partnership with UAE to create an International Center of Digital Innovation, and BDT's annual global Innovation Challenge, and ongoing work with countries to help establish local tech hubs.
"The bottom line is that we're going to have to find creative ways to collaborate. We need new regulatory models. And we need to leave behind old adversarial competitive paradigms and replace them with a more cooperative approach where companies and regulators find ways of working together to get networks and services out to where they can do the most good."
