Monday, 4 October United States In conclusion, we are pleased to be here in Guadalajara to discuss the important opportunities and chal-lenges harmonizing radio frequency allocations, develop-ing and disseminating best practices, and contrib-uting to capacity building. that confront all of us. On behalf of the del-egation of the United States, I wish you all a very The United States has identified three matters that warrant special mention in this regard. successful conference. First, the ITU should be a place where the develop-ment Thank you. of the Internet is fostered. The Internet has progressed and evolved in a remarkably successful way under the existing multi-stakeholder arrange-ments. Changes, especially changes involving inter-governmental controls, are likely to impair the dy-namism of the Internet—something we all have an interest in avoiding. Second, the ITU’s interest in cybersecurity should continue to focus on capacity building and the associated development and dissemination of best practices. This is an area where an enormous amount remains to be done, and where improve-ments will prove very valuable to all ITU members, regardless of the state of their digital development. We believe very strongly that the ITU should not be distracted from this important responsibility by straying into areas outside of its mandate and ex-pertise such as cybercrime and cyberwar. Third, looking forward to the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications, it would be a serious mistake to seek to extend the International Telecommunications Regulations to today’s world of broadband and the Internet. There is a superficial similarity between the narrowband for which the ITRs were configured and the broadband of today, but it is only superficial. Just as with the Internet, inter-governmental controls over broadband are likely to do much more harm than good. 31