 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva, where I'm very pleased to be joined by Mr. Attil Mehta, who is the director of telecommunications, media and technology for venture capital and funds for the International Finance Corporation, the IFC. Mr. Mehta, thank you very much for joining us today. Delighted to be here. Now I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about a subject which I know you're going to be talking about in a panel session here, and very much perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the public and private sectors, how can they can work together and accelerate digital inclusion, which is very much in everybody's minds nowadays. Certainly it backs. Let me backtrack a little bit and talk about why 2018 is significant. This year, more than 15% of the world's population will be using the internet. That's the good news. The bad news is the growth rate is slowing dramatically. So urgent attention is needed to determine what will it take for more people to use the internet. There are two sides to the equation. Supply, that is providing the networks and demand, providing the products that people want to use. That's where the public and private sector need to come together to address both sides of the equation. Right, and so basically what does that mean for the consumer? Well, for the consumer what we're finding is today half the world's population is not using the internet. Actually two thirds of that portion that's not using the internet has coverage. They either just do not have affordable access to the internet or they don't have the product that they would want to use on the internet. So what the public and private sector need to do is determine what are the types of products, it may be government services, it may be social media, it may be the ability to undertake financial transactions. And it certainly is a different model for the provision of services. So the affordability question is addressed. So artificial intelligence, the internet of things, they're not even on the radar for these people? Well, I think eventually they'll be on the radar, but you've got to build up gradually. You've got to first address their current needs. Their current needs are the provision of services they need on a day to day basis. Completing the transactions they undertake, the provision of food, health, education, all these services are today available over the internet. But most people are not partaking through the internet. So make it easier for them to be able to undertake those type of transactions over the internet. By giving the tools, the education? Well, I think the first step obviously is building the infrastructure. Once you build the infrastructure, and this is where you need a different model. In old mobile telephony, you could just bid out the spectrum and the private sector would come in and build their own networks. That's not going to lower the cost to a point where most of these people come on. You need shared infrastructure. You need regulators working together with the private sector to determine, okay, how do we get one backbone rather than three competitors building their own backbones? So that needs a public-private partnership. Then you go in, you build the networks in a more efficient manner. You reduce the average cost per user. And then you start to bring the services online. You encourage entrepreneurship. You get governments to build platforms where government services may be provided. So there are different models in different countries which can be replicated depending on the circumstances. Now the cost of a handset nowadays is pretty minimal. Yes. But yet people are still not connected. No, and I think the handset used to be a major issue, right? That's coming down. You've got $50 smartphones now. Feature phones are also being used for many of the services we're talking about. But the cost of data is still an impediment for many people. Provision of service is still an impediment for many people. And then the services they need in their particular geography. I mean, Facebook is all well and good. But you also need something that addresses your day to day needs. And those services are currently not being provided in many jurisdictions. And we've heard people have talked very much about, we were talking about 5G generation. However, there's many people here. They're still moving on from 3G and 4G. So the speed of access to this information is still pretty slow in some places. So we've seen that even with 2G, you can have very successful services like M-Pesa and Kenya. So that's very well known. But you do need 3G and beyond for many of the other things you were talking about. If you ever want to get to IoT, you're going to need 3G, 4G, possibly 5G, right, same thing with artificial intelligence. So there is a chicken and egg involved. So what types of investments is the IFC seeing in the private sector pursuing in this space across the emerging markets? So we're seeing investments obviously being taken by telecom companies to expand their networks to try and move up for the most part. In most emerging markets, it's still a 3G, unfortunately. Not all emerging markets have effective 3G coverage. So there's a lot of work being done there. The type of investments that we would like to see more of is what I was mentioning in the beginning, some of the backbone investments, which would allow for 3G and 4G to take place more easily. If everyone needs to build their own backbones, it's going to be expensive, and then you will not have the demand pick up. So you're stuck in a vicious circle rather than a virtuous cycle. What about the big bug bear, cybersecurity? How can we protect ourselves in the case of, obviously, malicious intent? So this is a rapidly evolving area, and for good reason it's getting more and more attention. There are companies out there offering products for protection. The telecom companies themselves are working to address their networks, and I think for anyone, any country, planning its network or any company, this is a key area that they need to focus on. Finally, we're here at the Global Symposium for Regulators. What should regulators be listening to, do you think, in terms of advice and in terms of future planning? So I think the main thing I would advise regulators is this is a new paradigm. I think in many countries we find that the paradigm that existed, which very successfully brought voice and mobile telephony, is still in place. It hasn't evolved to the needs of digital connectivity, and part of it is governments, not just regulators, have got comfortable with the revenues they get from the telecom industry. Today it's an imperative to get the telecoms industry to invest. Regulations need to change. They need to encourage infrastructure sharing. They need to be brought up to date in order to encourage these types of investments. That's all, Mr. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. And you'll find many more valuable and interesting insights on the ITU YouTube channel and, of course, podcasts on the ITU YouTube SoundCloud. One more time, please. Here we go. And you'll find many more valuable insights at the ITU YouTube channel and the ITU SoundCloud channel, and we hope you'll tune in to get more of those. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you, Max. Pleasure.