Your Excellency, Mr. P P Chaudhary, Honorable Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology
Mr. Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Prime Minister's Office
Mr. Pankaj Patel, President, the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry, FICCI
Mr. Didar Singh, Secretary-General, FICCI
Mr. Virat Bhatia, Chairman, FICCI ICT Committee
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good afternoon, it is a great pleasure to be back here in New Delhi.
I know that today is a major Indian festival, so I wish you all a happy Ram Navami!
I thank FICCI for the invitation to speak here today at the 2017 India Internet Conference, and congratulate FICCI for organising this event and especially for launching the FICCI-Indian Language Internet Alliance here today.
Statistics show that 85% of the world's population is covered by at least 3G services, yet less than 50% of people are connected. It's no use providing connectivity if people cannot afford the service, don't understand it or see no benefit to them. There needs to be incentives: subsidizing the cost to the poorest; educating people on how to make best use of the technology; and developing the local content and services in local languages that people can relate to and see the benefit of.
India has the world's second largest number of mobile phones in use, it is the world's fastest growing smartphone market, and the second largest Internet user base in the world after China.
Whenever I visit I am always very keen to encourage greater involvement of India in ITU and especially increasing the membership of India's industry and academia in ITU. Currently of the more than 700 industry members in ITU's, only 5 are from India, and of the over 140 academia members, again only 5 universities from India. Clearly with a well-developed ICT sector, there is a huge potential for greater involvement in ITU, and for India to take a leadership role in many of the activities of ITU.
Prime Minister Modi's Digital India initiative sets ambitious targets that will revolutionize government services and bring connectivity to the under-served rural communities. It provides a platform for the realization of the Prime Minister's Make in India initiative and the Start-up initiative. With these far-reaching reforms the time is right for India to fulfil its potential, and ITU as the UN's specialized agency for ICTs is there to assist in any way it can.
ITU's membership now includes most major Internet companies in addition to the traditional membership of telcos and telecom venders. With ICTs becoming pervasive in all industry sectors ITU's membership is becoming more and more diverse, with members from the automotive sector, financial sector, utilities etc.
Although it is estimated that 47% of the world's population is now online, it still leaves 3.9 billion people offline. Great disparities continue to exist especially in the least developed countries where only one out of seven people are connected. ITU takes this very seriously, as connecting the unconnected is at the core of its mission, and closing the digital divide has long been one of its major goals. The development and adoption of broadband, and particularly mobile broadband, by which most people now connect to the Internet, continues to play a key role in our efforts.
There is an increasing demand from more users, wanting faster connection, to download more and more data. This places great demand on the radio frequency spectrum.
This has to be agreed internationally, otherwise these phones would not work when moving from one country to another, and the cost of phones would be much higher if they did not comply with global standards and benefit from the resulting economies of scale. It is only through the international treaty on the use of the radio frequency spectrum, that ITU has been maintaining for more than 110 years, that this can be achieved.
All these devices need to be able to interoperate and this can only be achieved by compliance with international standards, something ITU has been doing for even longer. The networks carrying all this data and communications traffic rely on ITU's international standards. The development of Internet of Things and 5G will place far great demands on the network.
ITU is developing the necessary technical standards on IoT in particular in relation to smart cities. It is important for India to participate in this work, to help develop these standards to ensure the interoperability of IoT devices in India, and to help Indian IoT products enter a world market.
Another important area of work in ITU is to enable people to participate in the digital economy, by carrying out financial transactions online. It is estimated that there are 2 billion people in the world without a bank account, and of these, 1.6 billion are mobile phone subscribers.
To address this issue ITU has formed a unique collaboration with regulators from both financial and telecommunications sectors, digital financial service operators, mobile network operators, payment service providers, and consumer protection organizations with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and the Bank for International Settlements.
I believe the work on digital identity here in India under Aadhaar project would be a good basis for the development of e-KYC international standard, and I very much encourage India's participation in this work.
But access to this technology will serve no purpose if people do not feel secure and confident in its use. Without a trusted cyberspace, it is unlikely that the sustainable development agenda will be achieved.
Security of communications has long been part of ITU's work and this was recognised by the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005 when ITU was entrusted as the sole facilitator for Action Line C5 'Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs'.
There are many organisations and stakeholders addressing this issue, and ITU has been working hard to bring them together to forge meaningful partnerships to develop the security standards, help countries define their national cybersecurity strategy, set up their computer incident response teams, deploy international security standards in their infrastructure, protect children online, and build the necessary human capacity and skills.
To fully realize the benefits of the information society and to harness the power and potential of ICTs, partnerships such as this will be essential.
A world where everyone is connected to the Internet will be a better place. A better place to be informed, to be educated, to receive healthcare, to be productive and enjoy a better standard of living.
The ambitious UN Sustainable Development Goals address a wide range of challenges including ending poverty and hunger, providing quality education for all, and bringing clean water and sanitation to everyone. It is clear that the goals can only be achieved by the widespread application and use of ICTs.
This will the the subject of the WSIS Forum in Geneva 12-16 June – the world's biggest ICT for development event. I invite you all to join us!
ITU has an important role to play in achieving these goals, but we can only do this with the active participation of all our membership, especially from such a significant player in the ICT sector as India.
So, I look forward to India's increasing participation in the work of ITU!
Thank you.