 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2016 on day three. I'm very pleased to be joined here in Bangkok, Thailand by Thomas Lamanouskas, who is Group Director of Public Policy for Vimplecom. Thomas, thank you very much for joining us in the studio today. Thank you very much, Max. My pleasure. Now, I'd like to start off by asking you about the ICT market. Where do you think the ICT market is going at the moment? You see, the market is undergoing tremendous change. Of course, the underlying layer is connectivity and it's growing very fast. So, yes, we still have a lot of people unconnected, but we see this huge tremendous potential. If you look even with 3G, we've had a bit of a slowdown in the deployment of the networks. With 4G, it's coming back with a full force now, the deployment of the networks. We have already deployed 4G in most of our markets. So, just for the record also, we operate in 14 markets across the world. Most of them are in emerging markets, and there we also see the huge potential. And again, this is a huge demand for connectivity. If we see, for example, the market like Georgia, when we deployed 4G, the use of data in one year increased there seven times. So, as long as you give the people that, they will use. On the use level, you also see tremendous changes in the use of digital services, applications. Everything is going digital in a very contextual, useful way. You can do digital finance, you can do education, you can do health, you can do other things. In the same way, there is underlying that, there is a challenge for the business models. And the investor tension today is mainly focused on the new players, the so-called OTT players. And that's where it's very interesting also to compare. That, for example, WhatsApp's market valuation now per employee is 345 million per employee. Whereas us, to either tremendous like, is that the current is 100,000 US dollars per employee. So, that just shows where now investors are looking. And this presents the challenges of the telecommunications operators. And that is also underlaying both in the investor side, but also revenue side. Again, if we look at the traditional markets, so again, in terms of the dynamics of ARPUs, average revenue per user, so our ARPU has decreased 36% in the last five years. So, there's a tremendous opportunities, tremendous demand for connectivity, tremendous demand for the use of services, but underlying the huge growth over OTT layer and services layer, where there are underlying economic and business model challenges at the telecom operators and connectivity layer. That's some pretty impressive figures there. How do you think that telecom operators will transform to satisfy the needs of users? Thank you. So, that's following to what I described before, the changing business models. That means that telecommunications operators need to adjust to be able to survive, compete and satisfy user needs in this new environment. And that's through a few elements. First of all, moving to be much more providers of digital services and digital opportunities and satisfying the end user needs for services. Because connectivity is no more connectivity for itself. So, in the telephone world, you know, you had a phone, you had a phone, we called each other, that was the use. You don't need a broadband if there is no services there. And I guess, so telecommunications operators need to move to that area and we are very strongly moving to that area to enable all that plethora of services. And plethora of services, we don't see necessarily ourselves providing them all directly, but enabling other people and pretty much start-ups as a means and this is a big topic here in Telecom as well, to be able to package and produce services on that level. So, that would be powered by digital finance, that would be powered by data management platforms and big data platforms, that would be powered by connectivity. So, becoming that layer that enables others to do things. And to do things from, you know, also when we see this other layer, there's also the good time for us in telecom operators to come in again, you know, because the OTT level is also changing, you know. Now, we're already talking about that app economy is dead, yeah, just because it's easy to produce apps but it's difficult to find them now, you know. So, we also talk now a lot, you know, about encouraging start-ups entrepreneurs to produce apps. However, not producing an app is not a key constraint. It's making users to find it as a new constraint. Again, we see ourselves very strongly in that element, providing what we increasingly call contextual internet to the people. So, helping them to receive services when they need them, what they need it, which place they are now, and providing that ability. The one other layer is also the business model part, you know. And the business model part, I think, we have to become much more, especially global players as a Vimple company, to be much more integrated and operate as true global companies. As OTT providers do. That means much more integrated operations, better use of economies of scale, and abilities to provide much more nimble, much more agile business models so that we could satisfy the user needs as fast as the best players in the digital ecosystem. What about policy? What are the key policy challenges that need to be addressed in your opinion to unlock digital opportunities for everyone? Thank you, and the policy area is the key, actually, to make sure that these digital opportunities are delivered to everyone. There are, of course, still traditional areas, from starting with just a general investment environment. So, for example, you know, taxation, you know, when some of our markets, more than half of our revenues, go just to pay taxes, which directly impacts the final price to the users. Also, abilities to, you know, in the same areas, abilities to import telecommunications equipment on others. Again, you know, when we talk about digital economy, we talk about smartphones and new devices. Again, enabling environment for that, and still in some of the markets, again, more than 50% of the smartphone cost is related one way or the other to the regulations and environment. Then, another layer on the connectivity part, and that's again in terms of transforming how the operators are transforming, is enabling new, more agile, and lighter business models. So, the best policies in the world now very strongly adopting the sharing, you know, infrastructure sharing models, even active sharing models, allowing operators to concentrate more on the provision of services and ensuring that that layer where the costs, most of the costs are involved these days are as cost-efficient as possible. But also, above that, there are new areas, and especially I already mentioned digital finance, and we're still there to unlock it, you know. So, if we see now, because digital economy and this whole ecosystem cannot survive without money. As any economy cannot survive without money. So, you need that economic flows to go around. The problem today is that there's still a lot of people who are excluded from financial ecosystem. So, in our markets, on average, financial inclusion is only about 42%. Across our markets, and we have included, our markets includes rather developed markets like Italy and Russia. You know, in some of their markets, for example, Algeria, 98% of people still use just cash, and 98% of transactions are cash. Only 3% of people in Pakistan again saved in their financial institutions. Whereas, mobile penetration across our markets is 1.9%. So, what does that mean? That means that we need to leverage the opportunities that are provided by connectivity to actually include many more people. And I think there is important to have the right policies that combine the telecommunications regulator approach but also financial regulator approach. And we have discussions here in the telecom to enable that. And one last area is data management. Because, you know, traditionally, data was always looked from a protectionist perspective. You know, how to protect consumer rights. And that's extremely important. And privacy of the users in digital space is important. But I think that area that is becoming also as important is value that data and data transits the data flow create. You know, so there is an estimate that McKinsey estimates that around 2.3 trillion, so the data constitutes around 2.3 trillion US dollars in the global economy, just created by the data flows. At the same time, there are studies show that because if the regulations are not corrected, if the laws are not correct, for example, data localization requirements, so that could create a directly negative impact to the economy. So, data localization requirements, as per Yung-Tang estimates, can reduce the GDP by around 1%, an impact of reducing GDP, but even more impact to the concrete, small and medium businesses which costs of which could increase to about 30% to 60% because of the data localization requirements. So, this is just one area, but I think what we, you know, if we talk about this new economy, where users receive services, where they want, when they want, which they want. And already, you know, if we want to, there are services that are powered by artificial intelligence, by big data, by insights, the data area and this discussion around data is becoming increasingly important. So, I think also, it's important to get to try to balance the user interests in terms of privacy, but the same user interests as well in terms of the value they can receive from these new digital services powered by data. So, I think this is a new area, important area that's also, it's important from the policy perspective to look at. So, these are, as you say, the complex, you know, what's new about that, that these complex of areas, policy areas, is no longer confined to very traditional telecoms. As you see, they're plethora of different elements that together combine into the policy framework and policy landscape for this new digital economy. Finally, we're here at ITU Telecom World here. What's the value of attending events such as this? Extremely valuable. So, I already lost count how many times I attended telecom, but this is the place to meet, you know. So, this is a place to meet right people, to have the right discussions. So, both on the panels and discussions, and I had the pleasure to participate in a discussion on fiscal incentives and some of that I mentioned here. You know, on discussion on how we can achieve SDGs and how we actually, you know, sustainable way in a way that also brings revenues to their investors, but also achieves the goals and achieves both for the, you know, for citizens and governments, you know, and also, you know, seeing the launch and bringing attention to important issues like ensuring gender equality online. But, so, the global discussions, but at the same time also having very valuable bilateral meetings with industry colleagues, with the regulators, and, you know, trying to understand together in this co-creative way how to address these new challenges, various new challenges that I just mentioned. Thomas Domenescu, thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much, Max.