Statement
by
Mr. Sharadindoo Sadhu
Senior Engineer
Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union

Tuesday, 26 March 2002

Mr Chairman, we take this opportunity to congratulate you on being asked to lead this important conference. Indeed it is a unique personal distinction for you to chair two different ITU Conferences within a span of less than two years. I am here to express the best wishes on behalf of our members, some 140 broadcasters in fifty countries.

We wish to address this august Plenary on an issue concerning a significant and integral segment of the telecommunication industry – the broadcasting sector. Broadcasting continues to play a very significant role in public life, being accessible to huge audiences. Even today, there are more television sets and many more radio sets than the combined number of fixed-line and mobile phones, and personal computers. The broadcasting related content carried by satellites has well outgrown the combined telecom and Internet traffic.

Broadcasting is an agent of social development in the least developed and the developing countries. The ABU’s concerns address, in general, broadcasting and, in particular, the public service function of broadcasting which is essentially a service whose attributes are a focus on the needs of the people; freedom from excessive commercial pressures; and particular applications in human development and welfare.

As in the other segments of the telecommunication industry, the broadcasting sector is undergoing a paradigm change and is under considerable threat in the new communications environment, more so in the least developed and developing countries. While digitalization, convergence, privatization, the Internet, and the new regulatory environment offer new opportunities, these fundamental changes also generate formidable challenges in areas of capital investments, training of the human resource, business planning and generating revenue streams.

It is, therefore, natural for the broadcasters in the developing countries and the LDCs to look up to the ITU Development Sector for a helping hand in providing guidance and assistance in finding solutions. Undoubtedly, the BDT is doing a magnificent job in assisting the broadcasting sector. However, its contribution is constrained, both by its limited mandate for broadcasting related activities and the related resource allocation.

It is in this context that we bring our proposals to the Development Conferences and participate pro-actively in the preparatory meetings and the Study Groups. Our expectation is that the decisions of this conference will result in the broadcasting sector being fully integrated in the activities of the ITU-D as a full-fledged partner, something on the lines of what has already been achieved in the Radiocommunication sector.

Mr Chairman, we are hopeful that most of this will be achieved at the present conference.

Thank you for the opportunity to present our viewpoint.