Good day to all, and thank you Ambassador Doyle for the invitation to join you today. The last time I had the pleasure of visiting St Kitts and Nevis was to attend a Caribbean Telecommunication Union regional ministerial where I encouraged the participants to take full advantage of the remote participation that ITU has been offering for participation in ITU meetings and conferences since 2010, stressing how important it was for their voice to be heard in ITU – which is the lead UN agency for ICTs.
Nobody could have known then that online meetings would become the new norm, and that the global pandemic would put ICTs at the centre of so many people’s lives, and in such a short period of time. Since March last year, ITU has remained fully operational and has held nearly 8000 virtual events with a total of more than 10,000 e-meetings and almost 300,000 remote participants. Remote participation allows participation at little cost.
And that is important, as ITU’s mission is to connect the world. In ITU it has always been recognised that small island developing states had particular challenges and were therefore priority countries. As such we have provided SIDS with highly targeted and concentrated assistance in areas ranging from market regulatory reforms to emergency telecommunications and disaster response, cybersecurity, ICT infrastructure, spectrum management and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Right now, for example, we are rolling out an initiative in the Pacific that will help deliver digital services in education, agriculture and health in support of recovery.
The Smart Islands initiative is one of the many projects undertaken by ITU since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to boost digital transformation in the hardest-to-connect communities, including SIDS. These initiatives address the specific challenges and vulnerabilities facing SIDS, from expanding access to affordable and reliable connectivity to promoting digital literacy. They emphasise the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration in creating an equal digital future for people in SIDS.
We stand at a turning point. If we tap into new innovations like low earth orbiting satellite constellations, made possible by decisions adopted at ITU’s last World Radiocommunication Conference, and if we continue to raise the profile of SIDS, as we did last year by making available for the first time estimates on Internet access in these countries; and if we collaborate and cooperate with each other, bringing our own specific competencies to the table and avoiding duplication of effort; then SIDS will be well on their way to achieving universal, equitable and affordable access to ICTs.
Thank you
Q1. Since the ICT market structure of most Small Island Developing States is built around a small number of ICT suppliers, what steps, in your view, need to be taken to achieve optimal and equitable access of this technology, at a reasonable cost to SIDS governments?
One factor is that people do not know how to take advantage of the technology. Other factors include lack of awareness of the advantages of connecting, lack of relevant local content online in the local language, and in particular the cost of connection, which is still much higher in SIDS than most countries. This can be due to the international connection, many countries still relying on satellite connection, and the small domestic market that does not offer industry the return on investment that can be achieved in other markets, such as large urban areas. Industry needs to be incentivised. The regulatory frameworks needs to be harmonised. Industry cannot afford to be dealing with different regulatory regimes for small markets where there is little return on investment. This is why regional cooperation is so important, to develop a larger community with harmonised regimes, including spectrum management, and incentives to encourage investment.
Covid has shown how effective individuals and businesses can be in setting up and driving their business online – often from home. Reliable, fast and affordable international connectivity opens up huge potential for SIDS - as has been seen in the Pacific islands once a cable has landed.
To this end ITU’s work assisting SIDS in their spectrum management and choice of the appropriate technical standards is very important, so that they benefit from the economies of scale coming from worldwide harmonisation. ITU advises on the best legal and regulatory framework for SIDS to implement digital transformation and capitalize on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We also help SIDS carry out a national assessment of their innovation capabilities, so as to identify whatever gaps there are, and how to set about addressing them.
Cost-based tariffs should be the guiding principle, coupled with universal access to ensure that no one is left behind, and that digital and gender divides are narrowed. Digital skills must be developed to fully take advantage of the technology. ITU/UNICEF initiatives such as
GIGA to connect every school to the Internet, and the
ITU/ILO Digital Skills project to encourage youth to take advantage of the work opportunities of the technology, as well as the
ITU Academy online educational platform and our
Digital Transformation Centers are all working to this end. We also have a new initiative to help SIDS recover from Covid - which we are currently rolling out in the Pacific.
Information on all these initiatives is available on the
ITU website and I would like encourage everyone to take advantage of them. Finally let me reaffirm ITU’s commitment to assist SIDS to overcome their challenges through the use of this technology.
Thank you