It is a pleasure to join you today - thanks to my good friend, Gregory Francis. Greg and I go back a long way, I believe we first met at the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference in 1997.
So let me start by congratulating you Greg, and Access Partnership on the white paper on lessons learned from COVID-19. I will build on some of the findings in the paper to tell you what ITU has been doing to in response to the pandemic and how we hope to help with the recovery.
As you can see like most others I am working from home. Actually up in the Mont Blanc massif. I have been working from home almost continuously since the start of the lockdown last March. Thanks to good connectivity, my work and the work of ITU has continued quite successfully with everyone working from home. There have even been some gains in productivity, and our events have been more inclusive than they were when they were physical. We have been able to participate in many conferences such as this that we might not have been able to do if they had been physical - due to time and costs, and we have done so without any carbon footprint!
The network operators and the platform providers should be congratulated for being able to cope with the huge increase in demand throughout this year, as mentioned in the white paper – just proving how resilient the technology is.
During the pandemic information and communication technologies have proved themselves to be vital for keeping in touch with loved ones, providing vital healthcare information and allowing business to continue. Never before has the technology been appreciated so much and never before has ITU’s role been more important.
For 155 years ITU has led developments starting from telegraphy, to telephone, to radio, to satellites, mobile, Internet and now emerging technologies such as 5G and AI.
ITU’s role in maintaining the only international treaty on the use of the radio-frequency spectrum and satellite orbits – the Radio Regulations, developing international technical standards, and assisting developing countries with infrastructure and policy development is critical. We are fortunate that uniquely for a UN organisation, in addition to our 193 Member States we have over 900 sector members - most private sector companies in the telecom or internet sector. This international public/private partnership has proved very successful to ensure that we bring these technologies to all.
When the pandemic began ITU was very quick in putting in place protective measures for staff and delegates - which I am pleased to say have proved to have been very successful.
One of ITU’s first measures to assist in the response was to launch the Global Network Resiliency Platform to offer advice on how to address the huge surge in traffic caused by COVID-19. As we look to the recovery, this tool will help promote the long-term policy and regulatory trends needed to build back better. It is possible to contribute to this by going to
our website with suggestions about what future recovery efforts should look like.
ITU has also launched new guidelines on emergency telecommunications, child online protection, and on making digital information, services and products accessible to all people, including persons with disabilities. We are working in other areas mentioned in the white paper, such as the means to reinforce affordable and reliable connectivity – including in areas as diverse and critical as digital finance, e-education, e-health, e-government and teleworking. We have also built on existing partnerships such as the
ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health, and the
ITU-UNICEF GIGA initiative to connect every school to the Internet.
As we know almost half of the world’s population is still not connected to the Internet – mostly those living in rural and remote communities. It is not simply a connectivity issue. Statistics show over 90% of the world’s population is covered by at least 3G services. It is more an affordability issue and often the content is not relevant or not in the local language so there is no incentive to pay. Also there is a lack of awareness of the benefits where they exist and the skills to make use of them.
So all our efforts must have one thing in common: to collaborate together to bring everyone online.
For example, e-learning, as pointed out in the white paper, has been the norm where possible during the pandemic. But distance learning is currently available to only the one third of the world’s school children that can access the Internet at home.
My hope is that we will use this unique moment in history to strengthen collaboration and cooperation nationally, regionally and internationally – both in the public and private sectors – to bring the benefits of this technology to everyone everywhere.
Many thanks once again and I wish you a very interesting and productive webinar.