Americas TELECOM 96
Rio de Janeiro, 10-15 June 1996

Keynote Address
Opening Ceremony, Americas TELECOM 96
Dr. Pekka Tarjanne, Secretary-General, ITU
Rio de Janeiro, 10 June 1996

Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the ITU it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this beautiful, vibrant city and to what I am sure will be an equally beautiful, vibrant event -- Americas TELECOM 96.
It is eight years since the first Americas TELECOM was held here in Rio de Janeiro in 1988, and four years since the second Americas TELECOM took place in Acapulco in 1992.  During these years, dramatic developments have taken place in telecommunications, around the world and throughout the Americas region.  From a global perspective, the countries of the Americas have been in the forefront of progress, leaders in the development of today’s global information economy and society.
Like every region, the Americas is a region of contrasts -- contrasts in climate, geography, history, culture and development.  But certain characteristics are shared by the 32 ITU Member countries that make up the Americas region and stretch 15,000 kilometres, from the northern tip of Ellesmere Island to the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego.
For older civilizations elsewhere in the world, the Americas will always remain the “New World”, of open horizons and infinite possibilities, frontier lands offering opportunities to break with established tradition, to explore, to experiment, to begin anew.
This image of this New World has been so thoroughly celebrated -- first in song and story, more recently in movies and television -- that it is all to easy to forget how much of it is myth.  In fact, when the first explorers and settlers came to the Americas from Europe they were coming to a land that was already old and well-known to the generations of indigenous peoples that had preceded them.  The original inhabitants of the New World taught the newcomers much, including the communication routes that made it possible first to explore, then to develop the continents of North and South America.
This tradition of the old worlds learning about communications from the peoples of the new world has continued to this day.  If we look to the north, we see countries that have long been world leaders in telecommunications with highly developed networks for both basic and advanced services.  If we look to the centre and south, we see that countries of the Americas region were among the first to join the trend towards privatization and liberalization that has transformed telecommunications in the last decade.
As well as being leaders in the development of telecommunications, the Americas have a tradition of hosting important ITU events.  If we look far enough back, we will even discover that the modern ITU was founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1947.  More recently, Buenos Aires hosted the first ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference, just a little over two years ago, in March 1994.  And if we look ahead a little bit, we see that the next ITU Plenipotentiary Conference will take place in Minneapolis, Minnesota just a little over two years from now.
Two years after Buenos Aires and two years before Minneapolis, Americas TELECOM 96 provides an excellent opportunity to measure the progress that has been made toward the information society of the twenty-first century.
Insofar as technology is concerned, the Americas TELECOM 96 Exhibition will showcase the latest developments in communications and information technology.  It is no exaggeration to say that the technologies on display will soon make it technically possible to communicate at any time and from any place in the world.
If it is true that we are approaching an era of technological abundance or even superabundance, does this mean that the only challenge facing us it to choose among the many competing goods and services on offer?
In spite of the great progress that has been made in the development of telecommunications in many countries in the Americas region, not everything is perfect.
I referred earlier to the first ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference which took place in Buenos Aires in 1994.  This conference was a landmark event in the history of the ITU that will long be remembered for its many accomplishments.  Among other things, it gave the world the concept of the “Global Information Infrastructure” which was articulated by Vice-President Gore in his keynote address to the conference.  It also produced the ITU the Buenos Aires Action Plan for the comprehensive development of global telecommunications.  But without a doubt, the intellectual centrepiece of the conference was the “Buenos Aires Declaration on Global Telecommunication Development for the 21st Century”.  I think it is well worth repeating two of the key passages in this declaration:
 “Telecommunications is an essential component of economic, social and cultural development.  It fuels the global information economy and society which is rapidly transforming local, national and international life and, despite physical boundaries, is promoting better understanding between peoples.  Thus, ITU Members have a duty to provide for communications to be made available to all individuals, groups, and peoples....
New technological developments in telecommunication and information technologies have the potential to close the development gaps between developed and developing countries and, in individual countries, between densely and sparsely populated areas.  Telecommunications may unintentionally perpetuate development gaps without a more determined, integrated and strategic approach to the challenges of telecommunications development by governments, the private sector and international and regional organizations.”
How well do the Americas measure up to these objectives?  In my judgment, there is still a lot of work to do.  It is of course true that some countries in the region have achieved universal access to basic telecommunication services, even in remote areas.  But in many others, progress toward this goal has been very uneven.  Major improvements in urban telecommunications have often not been matched in the countryside.

Coming as I do from a country which has achieved a very high teledensity in spite of having a large hinterland and a very low population density, I have always been intensely suspicious of the argument that it is “uneconomical” to serve rural and remote areas, and that the people who live in the countryside are a burden on urban subscribers.  While it is true that initial costs are usually higher, so is the value of telecommunications and so is people’s willingness to pay for service.
As a former physicist, I like to test hypotheses of this kind through experimental methods whenever possible, instead of engaging in theological arguments.  Fortunately, thanks to the dynamic development of telecommunications in some countries and regions, there is now a considerable amount of experimental evidence that can help us answer this question.
As I look around the world, I can find plenty of evidence that it is becoming more and more economically possible to serve rural and remote areas, if entrepreneurs are given the opportunity to do so.  It is becoming increasingly clear that competition, combined with technological innovation, is often the quickest road to the goal of universal service.
My message to the Americas is therefore to be true to your pioneering spirit.  Instead of perpetuating the outmoded institutions of the Old World, you should be free to experiment, to innovate, to show the way forward, to capture our imaginations.
Over the next few days, I am confident that we will see this pioneering spirit on full display at Americas TELECOM 96, in the Exhibition halls and in the Policy and Technology Summits.  I look forward to sharing ideas, energy, visions and dreams with all of you, and discussing how we can work together to further the development of telecommunications, in the Americas and throughout the world.
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