 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva. I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Dr. R.S. Sharma, who is Chairman of the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India. Welcome to the studio. Thank you very much. Now we're here at GSR 2018, the Global Symposium for Regulators. I wanted to ask you why is this global forum important and what outcomes would you like to see emerge from this symposium? See what is happening is that now we are living in a connected world. In that connected world, there are technologies and there are new developments taking place almost every day. You hear of new terminologies, new regulatory mechanisms. So therefore, it is very important to remain updated, to remain in sync with what others are doing. And the GSR provides an extremely effective platform for all of us to assemble together and over the years it has really grown in dimension and grown in scope also. Where you not only have regulators, you also have industry people participating in this platform. And that makes it a very interesting place to learn, to connect with people. We also have bilateral MOUs with various regulators around the world. And I think this provides an opportunity to kind of reenergize those relationships and also build new relationships. So I think from the perspective of our organization, it is very important that such events and especially the GSR is the most significant event of the telecom world in some sense. Such events do, you know, we leverage these events to create much better understanding of technologies, people, processes going around the world. Now you are leading a session today, what were some of the key takeaways from that session? Well, I was leading the digital identity session and now the world seems to have realized that the identity is at the base of almost everything. In a connected world where you can create multiple identities, you can really spoof identities, you can steal identities and stuff like that, it is important from a security perspective also to have a very robust digital identity infrastructure which can participate and you can participate in digital transactions. So therefore I think number of countries assembled together and my panel also we had people from Ghana, from Oman, a lot of people from the private sector which essentially underlined the need for having a robust digital identity infrastructure. Of course the panelists also underlined the need to have securities, legal frameworks, you know, threats which are there which have to be privacy prevention, privacy protection, data protection, data ownership and privacy by design. So multiple, you know, concepts and best practices which are essential to ensure that we have a robust, secure, reliable digital identity infrastructure which protects privacy of individual is absolute must. Now the global digital landscape is changing rapidly. I mean we've heard very much the discussions here about AI, about the internet of things. I just wanted to find out from you how are regulators like yourself coping with this dynamic situation? Now one of the things is we must realize that the laws which were made, regulatory systems which were made, but essentially for a world of yesterday which was actually connected, of course connectivity was there, but this was not so virtual as it has turned out now. And many of those concepts and principles if you apply in the virtual world also, they really do not, you know, they are either becoming like hammers, you know, in a way they don't really capture the true spirit of this virtual world. So therefore we have to have a paradigm shift of new regulations, new laws. But then let us also understand that the regulator should not be in a hurry to kind of, you know, bring laws and regulations in place without letting the whole thing have a fair play. Because, you know, regulators can never anticipate stuff and can never regulate things which have not yet happened. So let it happen for a little while. Let's try to understand how to grapple with these challenges and situations. And then I think we should have the regulations. And the regulations objective should also be very clear. It should not be regulation for the sake of regulation. It should be regulation to prevent harm to the people. It should be regulated for a smooth facilitation of the progress which will take place. So I think the regulatory exercises in this space will have to be facilitating rather than, you know, really a very high-handed kind of regulation. Somebody use the term regulatory humility, which is very, very important term. One should realize when should one regulate, what one should regulate and why one should regulate. What about 5G? How does this go to affect things? Well, 5G, as you know, is a technology which offers a huge amount of possibilities. You know, ICT was limited as a vertical, you know, information, communication. Till now we were talking to each other, we were exchanging data with each other or accessing data from the Internet. 5G is going to transform that completely in the sense that 5G is going to become a platform for almost every domain of life. So whether it is health or agriculture or irrigation everywhere or transportation in smart cities, 5G is going to become all pervasive. Now of course the beauty of 5G is it has low latency. It has high throughput and most importantly there is a huge machine-to-machine communication at a massive scale. Now that actually opens up a number of applications for 5G. So therefore it is a very exciting technology. We at the TRAI are hugely excited about it. Our department of telecom have actually created a task force for rollout of 5G. We have created some centers of excellence for 5G and therefore the country as a policy level is also wanting and yearning to kind of leverage this technology for the benefit of our people. Coming back to policy and regulation, do you require a lot more input from technologists and futurists, etc., to be able to make the right decisions? Certainly because in this world one cannot assume that one knows everything, that especially in a world which is so dynamic and so technology intensive, one cannot work without the cross-sectoral people from all sectors and therefore we believe in actually interchange of ideas from various disciplines and what to say of technology. Even the domain experts like health, agriculture, everybody, you know, all of us have to come together. So this is going to be a truly interdisciplinary world if you may say that. Dr. Shama, thank you very much indeed. Welcome. And do tune in for more fascinating insights to the ITU YouTube channel and the ITU Sound Clan channel too on the new regulatory frontiers and more. Thank you.