ITU World Telecom 2018 - Ministerial Roundtable: Financing digital development

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Excellencies, Ladies & Gentlemen,

Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming. I am very pleased to welcome you to this ministerial roundtable on the all-important topic of Financing for Digital Development.

I was given a choice of ministerial roundtables to moderate but I was particularly keen to moderate this one, so I am happy to be with you.

As we know almost half the world’s population is currently offline, and most of those people live in remote, rural or isolated communities. Connectivity is difficult in these areas not only due to terrain and their isolation but also due to poor return on investment compared to urban areas. 

However, statistics show that 80% of the world’s population is covered by at least 3G services, so it is not just a question of connectivity. Clearly services and equipment need to be affordable, have relevant content, in the local language, and people need to be digitally literate to know how to take advantage of the connection, and trust it. Services must be directly relevant to improving their productivity, healthcare and education. 

Not only must the finance provide the infrastructure but the services have to be sustainable. This means government policies must encourage the necessary investment, help develop public-private partnerships, build capacity and advocate take up.

This is why we are fortunate to have such a distinguished mix of public sector and private sector representatives here with us today to help identify some good practices that have proved themselves, and explore some innovative solutions to this fundamental challenge.

It is a big challenge. The size of investment needed to roll out and upgrade national networks is huge:  estimated at $450 billion to connect the next 1.5 billion people.  

A further complication is that the roles and responsibilities with regard to financing the infrastructure have changed, with privatization and the rise of the all-powerful digital players spanning different sectors, with different responsibilities. 

Amazon, for example, was the first company to break through the trillion-dollar market capitalization a few weeks ago. The relationship between the telcos which build the infrastructure and the OTT players that benefit, creates some tension.

So there are huge challenges, and so now I should like to invite our distinguished panel to tell us their ideas on how we can meet these challenges and how to go about finding the finance to invest in the infrastructure that will bring so many benefits to so many people.