 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva. I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Arti Holomeini who is the Secretary-General of the EMEA Satellite Operator Association, also known as ASOA, and I want to welcome you to the studio. Thank you. Now I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about the, basically, the relevance of the industry advisory group for development issues, which I believe you remember. Yes, we affectionately call it the IAGD, now that it's up and running. ASOA and its members really welcome the creation of this industry group. It clearly recognized the role that the private sector has to play in development issues and by being convened by the ITU, by being multi-stakeholder, multi-sector, and by being neutral, it actually provides a really good platform which we hope will foster collaboration between different industries. So we actively participated in the first meeting this morning. We spoke about various themes and the overwhelming outcome was that connecting everybody, remembering, of course, that we're at GSR and IAGD is about development issues, that connecting everybody sustainably, affordably has to be the number one priority. And how can you do that? Well, satellite is a technology which has, of course, unlimited reach. So we know that we have quite an obvious role to play when it comes to development issues, but this year at GSR the focus is not just on the traditional issues like it was last time. Last time it was digital financial inclusion, where the satellite role is very obvious. This year it's more about 5G, artificial intelligence and more futuristic type of services where people don't necessarily understand the role of satellite. So for us, this is a platform that allows us to inform regulators and other stakeholders about the developments in our sector. There's tremendous amounts of innovation happening in the satellite sector. But also allows us to engage with other stakeholders and see what possibilities there might be. For collaboration. You know, we live in a very harsh world where so many operators, whether they're terrestrial, whether they're satellite, are facing tremendous business pressures and collaboration is not necessarily the first thing that comes to their mind. They have their urgent priorities, immediate priorities that they have to face. And that means that when you think about collaboration or even consolidation, these are things that happen when you're under pressure. And I think if we know what we're doing, if we try to do it properly, we should be setting a set of common objectives across the industry, keeping the user at the center of the objective. And setting objectives like reducing the cost of infrastructure and investment. Infrastructure investment is one of the key barriers, the key pressures that the operators are facing, both terrestrial and satellite. And hopefully if we can find ways to work together to look for the optimum solution, the most cost-effective, the fastest, the cheapest way to connect people, maybe we can reduce the overall cost by coming together. To launch satellites, of course, is now cheaper than ever, isn't it? I mean, people can, tens of thousands of dollars, basically, you can get a satellite up in the atmosphere there, but what benefit is that giving us? So, you know, satellite has been around for quite a few decades, but people are still hampered by quite an outdated perception of satellite. And of course, expensive is one of those features. Low latency, high latency, expensive, complicated, large, large infrastructure, who can afford to launch it? But all of that is changing. The innovations are happening on the spacecraft themselves in the launch segment, in the ground segment, and all of these innovations are helping to bring the cost of connectivity down and also increase the amount of capacity and also the quality of services that the satellite sector is able to offer. And so it means essentially that people on the ground can keep in touch with their crops, or the weather patterns, how they're changing. Absolutely. I mean, there's all sorts of different innovations that are helping people. There's, of course, the whole monitoring side of things, which is very relevant to climate change and Earth observation and these kind of challenges. Navigation brings, of course, all of the logistical and fleet management benefits that are so important also for IoT, but communications is probably the gel that brings it all together, no point in knowing where you are if you can't communicate that back somewhere. So, yeah, the integrated side of all the different types of satellite applications also is going to make a tremendous difference. What about this event itself? How is this event important to the satellite industry? So, I think one of the important challenges that we as an industry face is that we're not a handheld device. We are out of sight and necessarily also, unfortunately, out of mind. So, people don't understand satellite technology as well as we would like them to. But also, the operators, the members of Isoa, are very lean companies. Let me take InMarsat as an example, one of my mobile operator members. You have a headquarter in London, but you have services being supplied on every single continent and across every ocean. That doesn't mean that the company actually has staff in all of the countries and places where it is operating, which means that the links to national governments, to national regulators are not necessarily there compared with our counterparts in the terrestrial industry. So, at GSR, we have a chance to engage with multiple regulators, multiple policy makers in one swoop and inform them about really important developments. Let me give you one. I mean, I said last year's GSR was digital financial inclusion, a classic development issue, and there most people get it. Satellite is good for coverage. It reaches places that other technologies can't reach. But when it comes to AI or 5G, people think they scratch their heads. Well, satellite, is that really relevant? Absolutely. Let's take connected cars, for example. Can you imagine that Mercedes, BMW, or so on would actually give warranties for services, be they enhanced connectivity, infotainment or safety services? If those services do not work consistently, no matter where you drive your car. Can you imagine that if there's a cyber security concern and a company decides that we need to upgrade the software that the car is using? Do you expect every driver to queue up in front of a garage to get his software update? Do we imagine that networks, as we know them today, that are connecting our mobile phones will be able to cope with those surges of demand when they happen? We all know that whenever Apple puts up a software update for its iPhones, the networks crash. It takes a few days, if not a week or longer, for everybody to get their updates done. So this is where traditional advantages of satellite, like broadcast, will be extremely important, not just to send data down, but also to backhaul the masses of data that will be generated from IoT. And one of the things which is worth noting is that for the first time, the satellite industry is engaging in the 3GPP, which is the standard's body, which is working on 5G standards. So their first release of the 5G standard is already out, release 15, release 16 is scheduled for next year, and it will, in fact, contain components which allow satellite access as well. So given that the overall ecosystem is moving towards an IP world, we are looking at a future where both satellite and terrestrial can be integrated onto one single platform, so that services, be they for the connected car, be they for IoT, can really, the ease of use is made a lot simpler for them, and they can rely on different technologies rather than putting all the eggs in one basket and hoping that nothing goes wrong. Well, thank you very much for your presence here in the studio and at this symposium, and we look forward to catching up with you at some stage in the future. Thank you. Thanks for having me. 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