Dr Hamadoun I. Touré ITU Secretary-General Before looking ahead to the next four years, I would like to take a brief look at some of the defining moments of the past four years, since we last met together at the Plenipotentiary Conference in Antalya in 2006 – and when you elected me as Secretary-General, together with my co-lleagues Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates I am delighted to be with you here for the Opening Plenary of the ITU’s 18th Plenipotentiary Conference, and let me say how much I am looking forward to hearing from the Membership as we work through the next three weeks together. Let me start with a quotation from Octavio Paz, the great Mexican poet, writer and diplomat, which I believe neatly sums up what I said in the Opening Ceremony earlier today: “Merece lo que sueñas!” [“Deserve your dream!”]. Because, as I said earlier, at the Opening Ceremony, I fir-mly the Deputy Secretary-General, Mr Zhao, who has been a perfect partner in this four-year journey, and the Directors of BR, TSB and BDT, to whom I want to say how much I have appreciated their collaboration since Antalya. In the past four years, we have seen the number of mo-bile cellular subscriptions nearly double, to reach five bi-llion, and we have seen the number of people using the Internet reach nearly two billion. In terms of our own work, we have seen a number of land-mark events over the past four years which have been un-dertaken at the request of Membership, and which have acted as cornerstones and guiding beacons for the ICT sector during this time. I cannot detail everything we have done in four years – we are short of time – but let me single out a handful of truly exceptional events and milestones, and list some of the key initiatives we have undertaken. In terms of landmark events, each of the Sectors has of course held its major conference or assembly, star-ting believe that we are here in Guadalajara to dream, to imagine, to innovate, and to create a bright, long-term fu-ture for the ICT sector. It is sometimes too easy, within the narrow focus of our day-to-day work, to forget that the world we live in today would simply not function without ICTs and the commu-nications networks which underpin them. with the hugely productive and successful World And that it is ITU’s work – across the three Sectors – which makes the modern world possible. In today’s world, ICTs and broadband networks have be-come Radiocommunication Conference which was held in Geneva at the end of 2007. The importance of WRC-07 can only be compared to the importance of the digital world we live in, a world always connected, a world always on the move. A mobile world, where the future is sure to be shaped, at least in part, by mobile broadband. WRC-07 was followed by the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, which was held in South Africa at the end of 2008, and which saw greater attendance and more issues dealt with than ever before. While I was in the process of re-centring ITU’s work around our core ac-tivities, vital national infrastructure – similar to transport, energy and water networks, but with an impact that is even more powerful and far-reaching. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that next-generation net-works based on broadband will rapidly become the bac-kbone of the digital economy – and all the available data suggest a strong and positive correlation between com-munications and levels of development. This will make ITU’s work increasingly important as we move forward into the second decade of the 21st century, and it means that we need to take our responsibilities very seriously indeed, as we chart and define the shape of the next four years in ITU’s history. This will mean taking into account the vital importance of the private sector and the enormous power of public-private partnership in fostering development ambitions and achie-ving our standardization work was strengthened and energized at this very successful WTSA.And of course many of us also participated in the World Telecommunication Development Conference, which was held in India at the end of May this year, and which set forth the ambitious work programme for the Development Sector for the next four years. With the results of this WTDC, ITU’s develop-ment work now more clearly encompasses developing development goals – and in particular the MDGs. countries. The success in the first decade of the 21st cen-tury in terms of growth in the ICT sector could not have Distinguished delegates, been achieved without ITU-D. 16