Excellencies, Distinguished delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Assalamu’alaykum Wr. Wb.

May peace be upon all of us.

I have been attending this meeting for the last 3 days, and listened to statements from many of Heads of Delegations. I would like to thank all the sympathy offered by HoDs, friends, brothers, sisters to the casualties of disaster of airplane crash and prior to that earthquake, tsunami, and land liquefaction in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Although the affected area is considered a quite developed area in terms of ICT infrastructure, we have 4G access in those areas, but the earthquake, tsunami and liquefaction swept the cellular and internet access in the affected area.

Our rescuers, police officers, hospital doctors, volunteers, Red Cross, military badly needed communication access in performing their tasks.

Luckily we were able to restore service in short and timely manner then we were able to save thousands of people’s lives.

Imagine if the disaster occurred in the populated area that are not covered by cellular or internet services. I believe there will be more casualties.

This is actually our fundamental issue.

Whilst some of us in this Conference shared their plans in entering 5G technology but almost half of the global population remain unserved by connectivity and internet.

For this, I put a high hope on ITU led by the newly reelected Secretary General, brother Houlin Zhao, DSG Malcolm Johnson, and Directors will play a role not only as regulator that accommodate upcoming technology but how can ITU facilitate, I repeat facilitate, the people in unserved area to get service as soon as possible.

Affirmative policy should be taken by ITU to facilitate them.

 In our humble experience, the objective to connect the Indonesian archipelago within 17 thousand islands could not be achieved unless the Government of Indonesia introduces affirmative policy, with the aggressive target to connect over 500 Regents and Major cities by broadband backbone and must be completed in mid 2019.

To build ICT infrastructure in non-commercial, non-financially feasible area is the responsibility of the government.

Hence, the responsibility to connect almost half of the global population is (at least indirectly) becoming responsibility which is reflected as ITU.

The role of ITU has to be shifted aggressively, from the role of “regulator heavy” to the role as “facilitator” such as becoming match maker role (in positive way) between developing countries and global creative financial instrument such as blended finance, which is partly backed up by philanthropists to the conventional one provided by institution like World Bank, in line with SDG program.

Excellencies, Distinguished participants, Ladies and Gentlemen,

By this I would like to conclude my statement by again congratulating the elected SG, DSG, and Directors.

Also kindly, humbly request your support to vote Indonesia as Council member in Region E!

Together we can!

Thank you very much.