Opening Address
by
Yoshio UTSUMI, Secretary-General of
the International Telecommunication Union

Peace be with you. Thank you to the Government of Morocco for their hospitality to this important World Conference. I am happy to be meeting in this City. The City of Marrakech, the Red, the Magnificent

His Excellency Mr. Abderrahmane EL YOUSSOUFI
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Morocco,

His Excellency Mr. Nasr HAJJI, Secretary of State to the Prime Minister of Morocco in charge of Post and Telecommunication & Information Technology,

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Delegates,

Morocco is a country of snow-clad mountains, vast deserts and wonderful beaches. It is a country steeped in rich tradition. And it is now on the fast track of economic growth. I welcome you, the world's telecommunication leaders, to this great country and to the wonderful city of Marrakesh.

Here, in this colourful and vibrant city, many historic meetings have been held and many landmark decisions reached. What better setting then, for this Plenipotentiary Conference, the first of the new millennium, the new century and the new decade.

To see into the future of telecommunications would test the powers of even a great oracle. But one thing is certain: communications-whether information technology, IP-based, mobile or fixed-are at the crux of the current evolution of the global society.

At the start of the 20th century, the world was still labouring under the yoke of colonialism. Today, we are engaged in a new battle: the struggle for knowledge against the tyranny of ignorance. Information has the power to dispel ignorance, and to empower those who are oppressed by it. Information has the power to bind the global community into a cohesive fraternity, which shares the common ideals of peace and tolerance, growth and development.

The basic needs of humankind have long been food, clothing and shelter. Now the time has come to add "information" to that list.

A concerted global effort has to be made to eliminate the gap between rich and poor when it comes to flow of, and access to, information.

This goal of the telecom world is our goal, and we have a central role to play. But we have many hurdles to overcome. The euphoria of the dot.com boom carried the world into uncharted waters, and at times we lost sight of the horizon. Too much eagerness to "jump on the bandwagon" resulted in a mismatch between supply and demand. This has led to overcapacity in many areas.

In the five years between 1995 and 2000, the volume of Internet traffic grew by four times. But available capacity grew by 200 times in the same period. The "dark fibre" available on the most used routes, such as across the Atlantic, grew by several thousand times. Overzealous expectations led to overcapacity, which in turn has led to falling prices and profits.

Yet, despite that abundance of capacity in some places, there is not even a basic telephone connection in many villages in other parts of the world. It is not a question of resources, but of distribution. This is the result of a lack of global policy perspective.

In the year 2000 alone, our industry invested more than 200 billion US dollars worldwide. But the financial and social dividends have been far from optimal, because we were super-serving the rich few, and failing to provide basic services to the many.

Yet the statistics show that demand outstrips supply in the developing world. Three out of four new telephone users connected each year are in the developing world. And there are ten times more potential Internet users in the developing world than in the developed world.

Two decades of market liberalization, privatization and technological progress have made our industry more efficient, and more innovative. But it has not necessarily made investors wiser. Nor has it made telecom managers more honest, as recent accounting scandals have shown.

In the new information society, where information is the key to the economic, social and cultural development, ITU must play a pivotal role. It must provide a global policy perspective and wholehearted support for the battle against the tyranny of ignorance.

The missions now mandated to ITU are much bigger and far-reaching than the founders of the Union could have imagined. To make ITU a meaningful organization, contributing to the evolution and flow of information to every part of the globe, we will have to make radical and bold reforms, not weighed down by a myriad of bureaucratic mazes. We cannot afford to lose ourselves in endless debates. The Union must be reformed into an effective force that can lead the charge to realize the digital opportunity.

Our ambition today lies in the concrete realization that telecommunications can enable a hardy peasant in the snow-bound Himalayas to receive the latest weather forecast; or a young woman in the sun-scorched plains of Africa to learn the skills to improve her handiwork.

Ladies and gentlemen

I would like to repeat the appeal I made to you at the World Telecommunication Development Conference. "Let us set a global goal to provide connectivity to every village all over the globe by the time of the World Summit on the Information Society."

The investment required is really not so great. There are around 1.5 million villages still unconnected. They could be connected for less than the price paid for a third-generation mobile auction in developed countries that are already well-served. Raising that capital investment requires innovative approaches. I appeal to you, the world's telecommunication leaders, to make some bold suggestions for a global policy that would help us to "reach the unreached" and bring the potential of ICTs to all of the world's people.

In the next few years we must devote all our energies and efforts to achieving our goal, our ambition: to make world a better place for all, not just for a privileged few. We have to "reach the unreached".

Schukran