Wednesday, 6 October The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia will contribute to the universal access and ICT develop-ment nected to our neighboring countries such as Sudan and Djibouti and we have also laid a fiber optics back-bone in Africa and the world. network to Kenyan’s boarder. We believe these Besides, users will benefit from improved telecommu-nication interconnections will create additional high speed in-ternational and ICT service levels in such a way that af-fordability, service quality, and utilization of diversified gateway. services is guaranteed. To scale up this ongoing effort of telecommunication services development, in the next 5 years of Growth and Transformation Plan, my government has put stretched goals that is in the year 2014 , mobile tele-density To address issues of universal access more than 14,000 rural localities got access to basic telecommunication services. In the next five years, my government planned to scale up this figure to 18,000 rural villages and achieve 100% coverage to rural and remote areas to make them able to benefit from internet connectivity. Regarding the e-governance services, my government has been working on the following projects: A government network (known as ‘WoredaNet’) which linked nearly 700 local (‘woreda’) and 11 regional gov-ernment will reach 64% and that of landline will be 8.5%, from 8.5% and 1.5%, respectively. We are determined to exploit the opportunities made available by ICT both as an enabler and as an economic sector. We have also been aggressively working on the fundamental institutional reforms of regulatory and operation activities. States across the country with each other and with the federal government headquarters in Addis Ababa. An education network (‘Schoolnet’) which connected more than 700 secondary school institutions. An agriculture network (‘Agrinet’), which linked more than 46 research and operational agricultural centers. A healthcare network ‘Healthnet’ which will connect to all major referral hospitals for a nationwide tele-medicine Mr. Chairman, Finally, I would like to assure you that my country will continue its commitment to work with ITU in its efforts of coordinating global ICT development, standards, scarce resources such as numbering and spectrum, combating cyber threats, and the full development of world information society. I thank you! infrastructure. In general, my government is putting a great effort towards realization and deployment of an all-IP back-bone infrastructure construction which enables uti-lization of all types of services over the packet-based transport network, including everything from basic voice telephony services to data, video, multimedia, and advanced broadband applications. With the completion of the NGN, rural connectivity (universal access) and e-government projects, Ethiopia 161