Wednesday, 6 October Greece After a long absence, Greece is presenting again its candidature to the ITU Council, as well as for the RRB, maintaining its commitment and engagement to face the challenges of the future. We are open to listen to every voice and cooperate with all nations. We are de-voted The satellite market has attained a considerable eco-nomic growth rate during the 2009 fiscal year. The to-tal income of Hellas Sat S.A, a joint venture between Greece and Cyprus, which owns and operates the Hellas Sat satellite, for the year 2009 amounted to 27.5 M€. to support every development allowing all na-tions worldwide to enjoy free continuous and secure The transition to digital television which has already begun, to be in accordance with the time frame set by the 2006 Regional Radiocommunications Conference and if possible to comply with the European Commission’s recommendations by 2012, will free a significant part of spectrum which will be deployed for new innovative services. access to telecommunication networks and services and we hope that this expectation will be favoured by the ITU community. Last, I would like to thank on behalf of the Greek Government, our hosts for their exceptional hospital-ity and for the perfect organisation of this Conference. Greece believes that this Plenipotentiary Conference will take the best decisions to pave the way for the development of an effective information and telecom-munication Thank you very much Mr Chairman. society during the next four years to the benefit of all countries and nations in the world. We firmly believe that work on crucial issues like wide-band networks, cyber security, new radio technologies, the protection of the environment and the impact of ICT on the climate change, just to mention some of them, is mandatory for the Digital Economy to func-tion properly and ITU should continue to propose glo-bal solutions for the benefit of all human kind. Despite the economic crisis and its implications, Greece will make its best efforts to actively support and con-tribute to the ITU’s objectives. 133