Wednesday, 6 October Lesotho Chairperson and Distinguished Delegates, employment opportunities for big and small entrepre-neurs. Furthermore, the proliferation of communica-tions services in Lesotho has proved to be a catalyst to Lesotho remains a classic example of the successes that reforms in the communications sector can result in, in spite of size and economies of scale. Our people are enjoying the advanced communications services and there is no doubt that further competition facili-tated other economic activities such as business, education, health, tourism and rural development. In pursuit of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), my country has es-tablished by converged regulatory framework would bear more fruits. a Universal Access Fund in 2009 to provide access and connectivity to communications services in unserved and under-served areas. In its first year of operation, the focus of the Fund has been the rollout of network infrastructure to boost coverage. In total, the Fund has supported four network infrastructure projects between June 2009 and March 2010. These projects are going to provide network coverage to at least 73 villages, benefiting over 12,000 people in 3,000 households. Given the difficult mountainous terrain in Lesotho, investments in these areas are costly as it also entails development of access roads and connections to electricity supply which are also underdeveloped. These are however not without challenges. The most obvious is the current global financial crisis which has seen slow investments in all areas of economic devel-opment. As I have already stated, the landscape of my country is dominated by difficult mountain terrain, underdeveloped road and electricity networks and sparsely populated rural areas which make invest-ments in communications services an expensive ven-ture. We hope that our membership of the ITU family will continue to enrich our knowledge and scope in or-der that our interventions are not at variance with the world best practices. The communications sector in Lesotho and the rest of Africa has, over the last decade, been characterised by rapid growth, thanks to deregulation, increased open markets and unprecedented technological develop-ments I thank you all for your attention. in mobile communications. However, despite these important developments, international con-nectivity remains expensive and limited in terms of bandwidth. We are grateful to observe recent devel-opments in this regard. We therefore welcome the recent development of sub-marine fibre optic cables along our shores even though access to landlocked countries such as Lesotho still poses a challenge. We remain hopeful that competition among these cables will unlock penetration in the critical area of Internet to unleash the full benefits of the information society. 115