 I'm in the ITU library today with Kaz Aznavour, he's a historian and an expert on the history of the International Telecommunication Union dating back to 1865. Hi Kaz. Hello sir. I have a copy here of the original convention, this is a facsimile of the original ITU convention. Can you tell me a little bit about how ITU was founded 150 years ago? What was the result of a long development that started in 1848 with the first telegraph conventions in Europe and European countries had regulated the telegraphic system, their international telegraphic system since 1848 and there was a large number of telegraph agreements that covered the continent at the time and the International Telegraph Convention of 1865, the Paris Convention, which founded what was then called the ITU, the International Telegraph Union, that was a big unifier in this system, so it unified the entire regulatory system, it created specifically a unified framework for technical coordination and standardization as well and what it also did that was one of the big changes to before was that the telegraph convention of 1865 introduced the uniform tariff which was extendable globally and that was the basis for the global expansion of the ITU that followed. So you're saying that before this very impressive convention was signed, there were indeed agreements in place but these were bilateral agreements or regional agreements between different countries to manage their telegraph traffic but that after this we had a much more European wide system and particularly European wide agreements on the charging between operators. Agreements that were there before were bilateral and multilateral but they did not cover the entire continent but the system was fragmented altogether so if a telegram had to pass say from Portugal to Prussia it had to go to several different, it had to pass through several different zones that were regulated differently, that were priced differently and all of that created obstacles to international telegraphy which the International Telegraph Convention of 1865 did away with. What was the driver, who was the driver perhaps behind this having a unified convention for Europe? Was it the governments who wanted their communications to go more smoothly or was it the nascent telegraph operators who were finding it difficult to manage this fragmented system? If we look at the motivating factors we see that there was a need to simplify the system that was felt by regulators at the time, technical cooperation was another driver and there were political implications as well and political motivations to do it. Some countries sought to maximize their relative power by having a bigger influence on the telecommunication system which was already seen as a powerful tool at the time. ITU is now part of the United Nations family, could you tell me a little bit about how that happened and why? After the Second World War against the background of the war countries wanted to have more international cooperation and the war itself had also boosted certain technologies such as radio and new regulations were needed. So in this situation the ITU became a specialized agency of the United Nations in, was decided in 1947. And what about some of the technical milestones that ITU has had to negotiate in its 150 year history? Well the interesting thing is that there has been a long continuity, you know the systems differ a lot. If we look at telegraphy in 1865 and digital communications today there is a huge difference but we can all summarize them under the term telecommunication and it starts with the telegraph and we had the telephone and radio and later satellites became also a regulated subject matter of the ITU until certain digital technologies today. So I think this is what makes the institution stand out from a technical point of view. ITU was named by international consulting firm Booz Allen as one of the world's 10 most enduring institutions. What do you think has been the secret of ITU's success? For one the technical continuity of the regulated matter. Telecommunications began with the telegraph with the electric telegraph and today we still have telecommunications in a digital environment so that's the first point. And the second thing is that the ITU as an institution has worked in a way that served the international system of the past 150 years even with all the changes that the system went through and the technocratic consensus with which it has worked is under challenge today because especially with the with the substantiation of the global of global mass surveillance in the past years where we have got more and more information about how the surveillance is working there has given rise to more forceful discussions about the global political and ethical dimensions of technologies. The key question here is how the ITU will position itself to these issues. Will it completely ignore it or will it accommodate some of these debates and get more involved in these debates which are going on anyway. And these debates will also have an impact on the ITU itself because the institution brings together states and the private sector on the field of telecommunications especially on the infrastructure level. So it is already a relevant player in what is going on in telecommunications today. Kals, thanks so much for joining us today to have a chat about ITU's very impressive and very long history. We look forward to chatting to you again going forward to see how ITU is negotiating this increasingly complex environment. Thank you, Sarah. ITU innovating together.