 Welcome to ITU telecom world 2018 here in Durban, South Africa, where I am very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Mr Leon Keng Tai, who is a Deputy Chief Executive for International and Corporate for Infocom Media Development Authority in Singapore. Mr Leon Keng Tai, thank you very much for being with us. Now I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about smart digital development. It's the theme here of ITU telecom world. What does it mean to you? Well first, I think digital development is not about technology. I think that's very important. I think digital development is about transformation. Basically how a country or an economy can use technology to transform its economic activity so that it can remain relevant and competitive and also how it can transform its citizens so that they live better lives. And I think as a government this should really be the focus at the end of the day when we talk about digital development. So what's the most important or basic infrastructure for building a smart nation? And what are Singapore's plans for the future? I think infrastructure is a building block. So it's definitely a critical element. So when I talk about infrastructure development, we are here in the telecom world. So we talk about 5G, we talk about fibre to the home. All these I think are essential. But I think going forward for a digital economy, this hard infrastructure is critical but I think insufficient. Because when we go into a digital economy, we ought to talk about things like data flow, things like privacy, data protection, things like cyber security. So I think to bring that to the level of a digital economy, we've got to start to think about policies, incentives, innovation beyond the hard infrastructure. I think this is something that's very important for all of us to start to think about. Definitely. I mean connectivity is critical but it's not easy to roll out over full mobile or fixed broadband networks. Did Singapore encounter any difficulties doing this? And if so, how did you overcome them? Well, I think one of the key challenges when we rolled out our fibre to the home in Singapore, by the way, we practically have fibre to every home in Singapore. But it wasn't a straightforward task. The greatest challenge was to do industry restructuring basically. Previously, the industry was very vertical. Every telco has its own fibre, has its own infrastructure. But in order to make sense economically to do fibre to every household, we wanted to restructure the industry to make sure that the people who are going to provide the most expensive part of infrastructure, basically the dark fibre, it's got to be open access to everyone. And therefore the company that provides this cannot be vertically integrated. So that industry restructuring took a bit of, it's a challenge to get people to do the right things over time. But fortunately, I think we have overcome that and today we are all enjoying a very high speed fibre to the home. That's brilliant. And what about the 5G deployment plan? What are Singapore's plans for this and how do you hope to make this a reality? And would it turn you into a smarter nation? Well, that's the vision for Singapore to be a smart nation. So we have come quite some way. In terms of 5G, in fact, we have encouraged operators to start trials in 5G because obviously there are probably unforeseen technical challenges as well as use cases. You've got to test out the use cases. So what we've done is to allow operators to do pilots and trials during this period before commercial launch and then to provide them the incentive to do so, we have made the spectrum free of charge during this period so that they can try things out. So we are about to launch our first pilot network, the fourth quarter of this year. So I think things are quite on track. Now you're also a member of the Broadband Commission. Tell us a little bit about the work of that commission and why is that important? I think the Broadband Commission is a very good collection of very senior people, very influential people, not only from government but very importantly from the industry. And when I say industry, it's not just a telco but also in a way, you know, the likes of Microsoft, the likes of IBM, etc. So I think it's a good collection of industry captains and government officials. So we get together twice a year basically to discuss and share what we can all do together to chip in to sort of meet some of the SDGs, the development goals of the United Nations, focusing on the use of ICT. So we have, in the beginning we have done things like for example to make sure every country has a national broadband plan. Today we are looking at things like cyber security. So I think we have also moved along just from basic infrastructure. And what's the value for you of attending events such as ITU Telecom World? Again, I think, you know, many of us we are very much caught up in our own domestic work or regional work. So I think an event like this gives us the opportunity to come together and sort of hear and learn from what other countries, beyond our domestic or beyond our region, what are they doing to tackle issues like digital divide, issues like infrastructure rollout. And I think it's a good opportunity to find out best practices that we may not have thought of it ourselves. So I think platforms like this are extremely useful. Well thanks for sharing your best practices with us and wish you the very best of luck with your future rollout plans and your attendance here I hope will be fruitful and valuable. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you very much.