Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General

UNESCAP Committee on Information and Communications Technology & Science, Technology and Innovation: Speech on ITU's Work on Promoting Broadband Infrastructure Connectivity

5 October 2016, Bangkok, Thailand

Excellencies

Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and gentlemen,

I am honoured to have this opportunity to speak to you today about ITU's work towards promoting broadband infrastructure connectivity.

It is now well recognised that broadband Internet access is a driver of national competitiveness, productivity and innovation.

And the United Nations General Assembly has highlighted the cross-cutting contribution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to the Sustainable Development Goals and poverty eradication, and called for close alignment between the WSIS process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, noting that ICTs can accelerate progress towards all 17 SDGs.

ITU was pleased to collaborate with ESCAP at yesterday's regional review meeting to build regional capacity on the WSIS implementation and its alignment with 2030 Agenda, and raise awareness of the enabling role of ICTs in sustainable development.

With ICTs permeating all walks of life and business, the challenge is to work together with many diverse interests and stakeholders that previously worked in isolation. This is true at the national, regional and international level.  Only by working together, exchanging best practices and successful innovation, pooling resources and coordinating our progress will we achieve the goals of the 2030 development agenda.

And the challenges are well known: according to the latest ITU estimates 3.5 billion people will be online by the end of 2016, but more than half the world's population, some 3.9 billion people, are still offline. The digital divide continues and in fact it is widening slightly, and divides are very evident in particular the urban-rural divide and the gender divide.

With 2.2 billion people now owning a smart phone it is tempting to think that the future of broadband is mobile – especially here in Asia – but we must not forget the vital role that backhaul networks play, predominantly using fibre. In this regard I applaud the work of ESCAP in promoting the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway.

This region has two-thirds of the unconnected but it is predicted that most of the next 1.5 billion to come online will be in this region. Clearly there are considerable challenges but also opportunities and ITU is here to assist in meeting these challenges and help to take advantage of the opportunities.

ITU works in several different ways towards promoting broadband infrastructure connectivity.

For example, ITU decides on the global spectrum allocations and the technical standards to enable mobile broadband, 3G, 4G and now working on 5G to be decided at the World Radiocommunication Conference 2019.

ITU standards are widely used for broadband fixed access and backhaul networks, and video codec standards.

And we are seeing good take-up of the ITU-T G.fast standard that enables fibre-like speeds over the traditional copper networks, and is currently being trialled in a number of countries.

And ITU engages in considerable, policy and regulatory work and human capacity building work covering such areas as disaster risk reduction, network resilience, cybersecurity and accessibility.

ITU has long called for countries to have a National Broadband Plan, as part of a coordinated approach to policy-making, and this has been successful with the number of countries with broadband plans having increased from 102 in 2010 to 151 today, and ITU has assisted 17 countries in this region in drafting their Plans.

In summary, ITU, building on its key role in radio regulation, its world-class technical standards, its promotion of best practice policies and regulatory frameworks and its human capacity building, strives to facilitate and enable the broadband infrastructure connectivity that is so essential to achieve the SDGs, and we look forward to working with ESCAP to bring the benefits of broadband to all citizens in the region.

Thank you very much.