Thursday, 7 October Republic of Zambia Mr. Chairman ban, peri-urban and rural areas the Government has established a Universal Access and Service Fund to address the provision of electronic communications services in un-served or under-served areas and com-munities. With the ongoing rapid technological advancements and convergence of technologies it is cardinal that ITU plays a pivotal role in addressing the challenges of inter-operability and conformance. More often than not we are faced with challenges of interoperability of products from different suppliers, in some cases leading to duplicated deployment of products. As we face the migration to Digital Terrestrial Television we believe that has become more pronounced. We look forward to increased support from ITU in implementing our ICT strategic plan. n order to improve the easy of doing business we, re-cently implemented policies that have resulted in de-crease in the cost of international calling rates by as much as 70% and also reduction in the cost of domes-tic calling rates by an average of 60%. Finally I wish to end by stating that Zambia is commit-ted to supporting the development efforts of ITU to Mr. Chairman make this world a better place for our people. We have created an enabling environment to promote invest-ment further wish to mention that whilst there has been substantial growth on Mobile connectivity the broad-band and innovation with the correct mix of Public Private Partnership allowing private sector to flourish. connectivity has been very low. We are aware of the immense potential that broadband unleashes in our effort to attain a better society. Therefore, it is our sincere hope that this Plenipotentiary will facilitate formulation of a suitable framework to promote the proliferation of broadband services. I thank you During the next five years we intend to expand ICT infrastructure especially Optical Backbone to cover all parts of the country, stimulated by the implementa-tion of the e-government strategy that seeks to pro-vide citizen centric integrated services covering all sectors delivered through multiple delivery channels accessible to all citizens. We are aware that pervasive use of electronic data services comes with challenges of cyber security. It is our sincere expectation that this Plenipotentiary will come up with outcomes that address cyber security and as well as climate change. 187