B20 Task Force on ICT & Innovation

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B20 Task Force on ICT & Innovation

18 June 2012
Los Cabos, Mexico

Houlin Zhao

Deputy Secretary-General,
International Telecommunication Union

Distinguished colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,

·  I would very much like to thank the co-Chairs, Carlos Slim Domit, CEO of Grupo Carso, and Dan Reed, Corporate Vice President of Technology Policy, Microsoft, for their invitation to ITU’s Secretary General, Dr Hamadoun Touré, to participate in this task force on ICT and Innovation.

·  I am honoured to represent Dr Touré here today, as unfortunately he cannot be with us here in person, as he has other commitments in Geneva as we approach our annual session of the ITU Council.

·  ITU is grateful for your confidence in proposing our organization as the agency in charge of the follow up andassessment of the recommendations of this task force.

·  This is an important responsibility, and one we shall take very seriously.

·  ITU, the International Telecommunication Union, is the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs). With 193 Member States and over 750 sector members, associate members, and members from academia, ITU is committed to connecting all the world’s people.

·  ITU allocates global radio spectrum and satellite orbits; develops technical standards to ensure networks and technologies seamlessly interconnect; and strives to improve access to ICTs to underserved communities worldwide.

·  We pride ourselves on our unique mixture of public and private sector members, and across all of our work we emphasize the importance of ensuring that the public sector leverages the benefits of the private sector.

·  A good example of this approach is the ‘Broadband Commission for Digital Development’, which was set up by ITU and UNESCO two years ago, in response to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s call to step up UN efforts to meet the MDGs.

·  The Broadband Commission comprises a broad range of Commissioners from government Ministers to the CEOs of major ICT players, to some of the greatest innovators and gurus across the sector.

·  The Commission has the aim of putting broadband at the top of the international policy agenda, as a crucial tool in helping to accelerate progress towards the MDGs by the target date of 2015.

·  As such, its goals are perfectly aligned with the goals of this task force, and specifically its aim to enable broadband for all.

·  We are pleased therefore to see that America Movil, in coordination with ITU and other multilateral organizations, is committing to analyze and establish the indicators to be tracked and the methodology to measure them.

·  And we ourselves are committing to diagnose the starting point of the different countries and establish a goal for each of the key indicators.

·  Thank you again for this opportunity to participate in the task force, and I look forward to continuing our work together.

Thank you.