 Dear colleagues, my name is Hou Lingzhao. On the 1st of January this year, I take office as ITU's 19th Secretary General. Many of you will already know me. For about 30 years, I have worked in ITU, starting up as a telecommunication engineer, then serving as the Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau from 1999 to 2006, and most recently serving as ITU's Deputy Secretary General for the last eight years. As I look ahead to my four-year term as ITU Secretary General, my three key watchwords will be vision, action, and harmony, vision in the way we take ITU's priorities as defined by our members at our recent Plenary Potential Conference in Korea, action in our efforts to energetically execute and implement those priorities to the satisfaction of our members. And harmony in our approach to collaborating with an increasingly wide range of actors in today's fast-moving, faster-growing IT sector in a harmonized environment. ITU is already the world's most enduring international institution, with a 150-year history of successful management of the world's ICT networks and resources. I look forward to leading the Union towards an even brighter future at the heart of the ICT sector. I wish you all a Happy New Year.