 Yeah, well Europe's competing on a global stage. Telecommunications is global. So we need global standards and that's the challenge we have. Hello, welcome to the Etno FT summit here in Brussels. Joining me to talk about some of the issues coming up is Malcolm Johnson, the director of the International Telecommunication Union. Thank you for being here. Pleasure. You're speaking today. Give us an idea what the main talking points in your speech are going to be. Yeah, so I'm going to talk about a conference we've got coming in Dubai at the end of this year. It's to revise the International Treaty on Telecommunications. And there are a lot of concerns about this conference. First time the treaty has been opened up for 24 years, a lot of new issues. And it's the subject of a lot of discussion. There's been quite a bit of misinformation about it. So I just want to clarify some of the issues. There are many issues around now that weren't of a concern in 1988 when the treaty was adopted. I mean, mobile communications has exploded since then. Of course, we've got the internet and we've got privatisation, liberalisation throughout most of the world now. But there are a number of issues that related to that that need to be addressed and our concerns in many countries throughout the world that are not covered by this treaty. And will they be coming along to Dubai? Will they be involved at least at the talking level? Yeah, we've got ITU has got 193 governments that are members of ITU. But we also have a big industry membership. We have several hundred companies, operators, vendors, including other organisations, standards organisations, all members of ITU. So they're all coming together and preparing for this conference. But of course, because it's a treaty conference, it's the member states that will be doing the negotiating. But of course, before they get to Dubai, they're going to be lobbied by their industries and their respective constituents. So they'll be bringing their national positions to this conference. There's only 10 days. But at the end of it, we hope to have a new treaty on international telecommunications, which will establish a new international regulatory framework to take forward the telecommunications, information communication technologies into the future, especially to encourage market forces to address some of the concerns, such as investment in networks, that a number of people have concerns about. Well, I mean, this is one of the big areas where the EU, the European Commission and so forth, there are various instruments, financial instruments to encourage, well, to make up the shortfall in this investment. I mean, what do you see are the main problems, particularly from an EU standpoint? Well, the EU has got a very good regulatory framework, but it puts telecommunications as global. I mean, the European companies are competing at a global level. So really, what we would like to see is this conference being able to extend some of these good practices, regulatory practices onto the global stage, so that we have this framework throughout the world. And then places everybody on an equal footing to compete. So that's one of the main things, especially from the industry side, they would like to see, you know, to have a global framework to compete on a level playing field. And do you think the model of some of the standards and legislation we have in Europe might be a model for other countries to follow? Yes, I mean, we, you know, Europe is a main player in ITU, but we have six regions in ITU. And our standards are international standards, so they're adopted throughout the world. Of course, we get European input to the development of these standards. So some of them are based on European standards, but they could be based on Asian standards, Chinese standards. The challenge we have is to get global agreement to things such as technical standards, but also this regulatory framework. OK, thank you very much. Do stay with us on views.eu for more interviews from the FT-ETNO Summit.