Mr Sushil GHIMIRE Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communications Mr. Chairman I bring with me the good wishes and greetings from the people and Government of Nepal. It is a nice coin-cidence that Nepal is a small country but home to the highest mountain – The Mt. Everest. Nepal is situated comfortably in-between China to the North and India to the South, east and west, and has a population of 28 Million. From political perspective, we are, at the moment, working on to finalize its new constitution after un-dergoing a historical political change a few years back. The popular mass movement had brought with it an increased sense of political consciousness among the general population, and now people of Nepal are de-termined to prove that decade long internal insurgen-cy Mr. Chairman; Secretary General, ITU; Your Excellencies; Distinguished Heads of Delegations and Members of Delegations, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is indeed a matter of great pleasure for us, the Nepalese Delegation, to be here with you in this au-gust will be extinct and that permanent peace and sta-bility will prevail in the country, where Lord Gautama Buddha, the symbol of peace, was born. Mr. Chairman The worldwide development in ICT technology includ-ing fast paced evolution in data, internet and mini-aturization of equipments and user devices is a bless-ing to countries like Nepal that has one of the most difficult terrains in the world. In the last ITU-PP held in Turkey, we were glad to mention that the overall tel-edensity had reached 6% for a population of 26 mil-lion; gathering today in this beautiful country Mexico. and that included mobile penetration of about It is also our pleasure to come to know that based on a study in 2007 this very city “Guadalajara” is called as “city of the future” due to its youthful population, low unemployment and for having the second strongest economic potential of any major North American city. Our appreciation goes to the Secretary-General of ITU, Mr. Hamadoun Toure and his entire team for their untiring efforts in preparing and managing this Plenipotentiary-2010 here in Guadalajara of Mexico, and our sincere thanks go to the government of Federal Republic of Mexico for the excellent arrangement and superb hospitality accorded to us. 3%. As compared to this figure, in mere 4-years, Nepal has recorded a massive success concerning deploy-ment and distribution of telecommunications services throughout the country. As of July this year, the overall teledensity of the country has crossed 31%, of which 27% belongs to mobile services. Similarly, penetration of internet/data services has almost reached 5% as of the latest figures. This high growth rate is partly due to competition in this area, where at present 6 telecom operators are actively trying to connect the unconnected remotest locations of the 136