 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio this morning, Mr Hulun Jiao who is the Secretary General of the ITU and has just been elected for another four years. Mr Jiao, welcome to the studio and congratulations on your election victory. Yes, thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be re-elected by ITU family to be the next Secretary General of ITU to lead the ITU for next four years. I'd like to start off by asking you what is your vision for the next four years? I think that we are very pleased that the ITU as the United Nations Specialized Agency for ICT worked with our partners and pushed for the ICT development over the last decade and we achieved a lot. ITU also worked very hard with our industries for new technologies such as 4G and 5G. And we are aware that despite all this marvelous achievement and progress, we still have very serious challenges that half the population is not connected online yet. So to connect those people online, to enjoy the ICT benefit for those already connected with those not connected yet, I think it's a big challenge. Of course, ITU will continue to work hard with our members, with our partners to leverage the power of ICT by offering new technologies such as 5G. We will discuss the 5G standards and spectrum issues next year at our Water Radio Communication Conference. And we also try very hard to encourage public-private investment in ICT business in particular to extend our ICT coverage to those areas not connected yet. So if I may, I could use 4Is to highlight my missions. 4Is, infrastructure. So we still have to extend our infrastructure to those areas not to enjoy these ICT services yet. But we also have to also, don't forget that, we also have to upgrade the current infrastructure with new technologies such as 5G. So this infrastructure covers both innovation for new technologies and extend the infrastructure to those not connected yet. And then the first eye. And the second eye is investment. Investment is quite important. If you don't have investment, you cannot really make things happen. And here we have to mobilize public-private investment, and in particular private investment. Of course, to attract the private investment, we have to create a good environment for investment. So we have a lot of jobs, a lot of tasks to encourage the investment. On the other hand, there is also, in my opinion, some issues that ICT is marvelous, ICT is good business and always profit-making. So that is true to some extent, but not 100% true because ICT also has a lot of risks. With high technology, you need investment for new technologies, you need investment for new systems. And such kind of investment is small amount, but it's quite a huge investment. And then industry who invested, they need investment to upgrade their services. And they have to also to honor their social obligations. And they, for example, assist local GDPs. So all this will be heavy for the industry. And on the other hand, the public, I want to have service with low price, affordable price, that is clear. And also within industries, there are strong competitions. Therefore, it's a profit-making business, but it's also a risk business that many big guys, big names in the last decade disappeared from our market because they cannot survive. So therefore, we still have to support this business and have good environment, good measure to support the industry to further invest in this business. So that investment is my second eye. Third eye is innovation. Of course, we need innovation for new technologies, but also we need innovation to make things more easily accepted by those who have not been connected yet. We cannot just follow the same way as we do the business in the past. We have to have innovative ways to do business to further extend our benefit of ICT to those people. So that is what I mean. And also innovations here have given us a lot of wonderful products. But also here, you have to understand that innovation is not necessarily coming from big guys. SMEs, small medium-sized entrepreneurs is a rich source of innovations. And particularly in today's environment, young people, they know technologies. They know the market. They know the challenges. They want to contribute. So they can have a lot of marvelous innovative ideas to help us to extend the new technology of ICT with local solutions to connect the local community. So this innovation also means that we have to work hard to mobilize innovations from big companies, from small medium-sized entrepreneurs, but also from the social association to look for new ways to do the business. The last I is inclusiveness. We should not leave anybody behind. So we are working with the general, you know, beneficial groups. And for those groups, like kind of capital people, like aged people, like children, like, you know, those who use remote areas, you know, has a lot of difficulty to be connected. So this, we have to make sure that, you know, we can go together with all these people, you know, we should not leave anybody behind. So I have four eyes, four eyes, infrastructure, investment, innovation, and inclusiveness. So this will be my mind, my agenda. What do you see as the top challenges facing the union in the next few years? Yeah, as far as IETU is concerned, IETU, of course, they enjoyed 153 years of history of development. And why IETU still that kind of relevant, because IETU always work with the spirit of innovation. And we work with the industry for new technologies, you know, from very beginning up till now. And that is one of the secret, why we are still relevant. Although our history is long, but our spirit is young, you know, that we work with industries for this technology. But on the other hand, as far as innovation concerned, I see also a problem that we have to improve our efficiency, because we have limited resources, human resources, financial resources, and expectation from the public is ever increasing. We have to use the limited resources to do more rather than to do less. And to change our task, you know, we have to, you know, to find new ways to work. Therefore, the efficiency is very important. Of course, as older organizations, you know, we are quite successful and appreciated by our members that why this time they unanimously elected me as the new secret general, because they found that IETU is really the good organization, good platform to facilitate SDG development by the ICTs development. And they consider that ICT could play important roles to some extent, key roles in the next development. We're talking about forced industrialization. And we talk about the information society and all this, you know, cannot just go without IETU in my opinion. I met with the secret general of the United Nations earlier this week. And he also clearly told me that, you know, IETU should be in the center of this kind of development. So I was very pleased to have his encouragement. He gave us a message last year at our WTDC that in his opinion, ICT is a very powerful tool which can help us to achieve SDG, each and every SDGs. So in his message, of course, it inspires us and we have to work very hard. But on the other hand, as far as organization, you have organizations advantages, you have also the challenges, the problems of organizations. So I just mentioned that efficiency is one issue, transparency, and also to create a good environment to let our staff to enjoy, because the staff is our asset. If you do not have good environment for staff to enjoy to work there rather than just come here to work for money, I think that for those in the statistic contributing to the organizations and those who just come here for salary, it would make a big difference. And why IETU is so appreciated by people, I think we have very good staff. So this one, as far as organization is concerned, we really have to work together to further improve IETU's environment. But more importantly, in my opinion, for the future of our development of our organizations, to have industry as our partners, to have industry consider IETU as their home is absolutely key for our success, because it's industry who develop a standard. So it's the industry who develop businesses. And if we do not have industry with us, industry including the big ones, the small ones, the medium size ones, all the industry partners, I think that, you know, you talked about telecom industry, you talk about satellite industry, you talk about television industry, broadcast industry, and you talk about OTT industry. All these are quite important for our future of information society. But all these must consider IETU as their natural home. But this is still challenging to us. We have to create a good environment to convince them this is their home. And so this, I think that give us challenges. But what is good in my opinion that I see more and more sectors, industry members to join us. For example, Google, Facebook, Alibaba there, one after the other joined IETU recently. And we are also working with our members to create a good environment to encourage this, for example startups, you know, small entrepreneurs, you know, find a way to join us. And we also invite university to join us. So all this, I think that we needed to, you know, to consider our organizations as, you know, some kind of innovative and good environment for people to enjoy, to work with us. And also, you know, another thing I also consider that everybody recognizes ICT is important. Now everybody appreciates IETU. But from our side, we really have to open our mind to try to look for good partnership with everybody who wish to work with us, rather than to tear the others. You know, it's our business, you should not do that. I think that is not correct attitude. So I try my best to create this kind of images environment. Of course, we also encourage our media friends to help us. And we have not done enough. We are not that good. So I wish to, you know, to further extend good cooperation with our media. I wanted to ask you, how do you think we can bring together IETU's incredible heritage, 153 years so far, and it's cutting-edge work to remain relevant in today's fast-paced world? I think we have to be very good in the front line, rather than to be requested to do something. If there is new technology such as artificial intelligence, and we see that our industry is working on this one, and we try to work together with them to, you know, to try to develop the business. Of course, we cannot do everything. It's clear. But we will put everything, you know, which is in our mandate, in our competence. We try to work with industry, help industry to develop standards for new technologies. We have to promote new technologies, and we have to also, you know, to work with the other partners to see how can we further extend, you know, some kind of association, allies, partnerships that we can all enjoy to work together, rather than to fight each other. So I think that as far as IETU technology is concerned, of course, today, also you have to understand that 20 years ago, not many standardization organizations, ITU is one of a few, we established international organizations for technology standardization and work. Today, you know, the industry sometimes they move very fast. They want to go, you know, quickly with their technology, with their innovations. Therefore, they create a lot of fora and consortia to develop their own standards. So now, it's no longer the case that ITU or ISOIC, these two called three big guys, you know, to kind of monopolize the work of standardization of technologies. But that is not a problem for me because industry, if they're moving fast with their technologies, you know, with their own standards, it's already accepted by market, I think that would be also good because the market is so huge that you need to give everybody a chance. But on the other hand, if you really want to have a global market, then you have to have global ideas and global standards, then in the world there are not many. So ITU is one of them. And our ITU may be the only in the world that ITU is only global intergovernmental standardization technology organizations. And within UN, we have many, you know, UN agencies, but I'm afraid only ITU, not only to talk about technology development, social development, but also ITU also develop industry standards to help the global family to use the new technologies. And ITU has a lot of things to enjoy. And ITU also has a lot of opportunities to be further developed. So I'm very optimistic that in ITU we have another 153 years at least in the future to, you know, to help the global family to, you know, to use ICT. Unless ICT disappeared, then maybe we don't need anyone. Then you don't need ICT. But in my opinion, that ICT will be always good to us to help people. And as long as ICT is still there, ITU will be there. We look forward to catching up with you again in the future. And thank you very much indeed for being with us today in the studio. Thank you. Thank you.