 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 here in Bucharest, Romania, where I've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio today. We have with us Nigel Casimir, who is the Deputy Secretary-General and Head of Regional Policy Development for the Caribbean Telecommunications Union. Nigel, welcome to the studio. Thank you. Thank you very much, Max. Perhaps we could start off by talking about the CTU, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union. Tell me a little bit about the CTU and its role here at PP22. Right. Okay. So, well, the CTU is our regional intergovernmental organization in the Caribbean that assists our member governments with policy development, capacity building and so on in this area of telecommunications and ICT. The CTU has been around for 33 years. We were established in 1989. We have 20 member countries. Well, it's countries and territories in the Caribbean, 14 of which are independent states and six overseas territories, five from Britain, one from the Netherlands, actually, in terms of our membership. So, we assist our member states with policy development, with capacity building, with project coordination and also with representation at international organizations where maybe they might not necessarily have the resources to follow. So, we would try to cover as many as possible and report back to our members in terms of any items of specific interest or concern that we might pick up. So, we attend CTL meetings, ITU meetings, as the case might be. So, here at PP22, of course, this is a treaty-making conference and we've been able to must a historic number of our CTU member states to be here present in person. Of the 14 independent states, we managed to get as many as 13 here, both. And, of course, the special occasion was that for the first time, we actually had a Caribbean candidate for an ITU executive post. That was Mr Stephen Barrow from the Bahamas. So, one of our CTU member states actually had a candidate. So, that was a special incentive and it actually, you know, greatly enhanced the participation from our region. Stephen, as we know, took silver medal, let's put it that way. Yes, yes, yes. But, hopefully, there are plenty of things for him to get his teeth stuck into over the coming years. Yes, I think it would. I think it's also raised the profile of the Caribbean as well. And I think that will stand us in good stead going forward. Let's talk about raising the profile of Caribbean and small island developing states. How do you see that being able to be actioned in the best possible way through this forum? Well, certainly, apart from the election thing, of course. But, of course, we are now paying attention to some of the resolutions that are before the conference, right? And there are resolutions on items of great interest. Mostly related to development of our networks and services, right? With COVID in particular, every nation of the world has had an increased emphasis on digital transformation. So, digital transformation is everywhere. We'll see the value now in a practical way of using the technology to deliver services, governments, its commerce, its education, all of these things. So... An early warning system. Early warning systems, emergency communications, which, of course, is very important to us in the Caribbean with our annual hurricane season and things like that. So, it has allowed us to get more of our members involved with the actual policy, more of the policy development at an international level now related to all of these areas. And, well, hopefully they will see the value of greater participation in fora like the ITU, right? Where they can take a seat of detail with all the big boys and one country, one vote, basically represent their requirements, you know, and make sure that their needs are taken into account when any of these global resolutions are being made. And in terms of the people who are attending here, we're not just talking about member states, we're also talking about industry and academia, et cetera. So, how important are those conversations? That's very important, actually. And I think ITU recognizes the value of having those sort of industry players beyond just the member states. Within the CTU as well, we, since 2003 or 2004, have also created membership categories, non-state membership categories, private sector members. We have special governmental type agencies. For example, now we have some regulators who are also members of the CTU. So, what we do in terms of our policy development in the Caribbean is we create fora where they can all come together and make appropriate inputs into the policies that are recommended for our member states. And we do that in areas like internet governance, spectrum management, some of the items before us here are internet-related matters, you know, over-top services and all these sorts of things. So, in our recent ministers' meeting in the Caribbean, we dealt with two key areas as far as technical policy development were concerned. One was related to regulatory harmonization in the Caribbean and the other one was related to the management of over-top services. So, this is the type of thing that the CTU does. We would get the relevant stakeholders together to create some coherent policies and ideally harmonized policies for our Caribbean area. We have an aspiration to create what we call a single ICT space in the Caribbean. The individual small member states don't have the market power that we would have if we all got together and created a big space. I mean, you've seen it in Europe with the European Union, for example. So, this is an aspiration of ours. And actually, I think with COVID, the effects of COVID as well, that has also given some extra impetus to making that happen. And what follow-ups do you anticipate after this planning potentially conference? Right, well, we are following on resolutions related to networks development, internet-related type stuff. There are even some related to spectrum management. So, what these would do is inform our own regional work. Next year there is WRC, the World Radio Communication Conference. So, it will help to focus us in terms of making cogent inputs at that WRC. And we do have experience, in fact, in the recent experience within the last two WRCs, whereby the Caribbean participation has influenced the course of negotiations, in fact, before and at WRC. What would you say is the most challenging and pressing issue currently facing your members at the moment? Is it connectivity? Is it investment? Is it infrastructure? We have fairly good infrastructure. Broadly, one would say it's connectivity. But it's not connectivity from any point of view, necessarily a lack of infrastructure, but more affordability of infrastructure. So, again, I talked about small markets. You find that with the smaller markets, you don't get the economies of scale that you would get if they were bigger markets. So, you typically would find that the cost of our services are a bit higher than you would find in the nearby U.S. and Canada and those sorts of places. And part of it is related to the market size. So, this is why we are quite interested in harmonizing the Caribbean space so that we can get better affordability and that would help drive further penetration, further service penetration. So, I mean, I'm based in Trinidad and Tobago, and we are fairly large in the context of the Caribbean islands. And yes, you will find that services within Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, which is even bigger than Trinidad and Tobago, the cost of services in those two territories is, well, markedly lower than in some of the smaller islands. Barbados is relatively well developed, but they are a lot smaller in terms of market. So, as you go throughout the Caribbean, you'll find that the cost of services would vary and it becomes more and more of a problem, this smaller, the population that's involved. So, what we're trying to do is harmonize this market as much as possible so that you wouldn't get significant variations. Okay, now, this is my third planning potentially conference I've been with at ITU, so it's once every four years. We were to sit in the studio here in four years' time. Yes. How would you hope the landscape would look then? Well, I mentioned earlier on digital transformation. I would hope that we would have a lot more online services going on. I would want to show you my digital ID from Trinidad and Tobago that I can use throughout the islands of the Caribbean. I wouldn't necessarily have to travel with a passport if I wanted to travel throughout the Caribbean because we've created this single ICT space and so on. The next PP is probably going to be in Qatar, I think it is. Yes. I think that's what... It's 2026 indeed. Yes, it is. 2026, right? So, and while we have some connectivity services here that we're using now to talk to people back home and so on, I would think that we'd have these things enhanced, much faster, less congestion on networks and so on. So, I think hopefully in four years' time we'll find that we are a lot more digital. Let's very much hope so. Well, nice to talk to you. Thank you so much for joining us in the studio today. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you and hopefully we'll catch up a little bit sooner than in four years' time. Yes, thank you. Thanks very much indeed. Thanks for having me. Okay.