 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2018 here in Durban, South Africa where I've got the great pleasure here of being on the Bangladesh Pavilion here with three gentlemen from the Bangladesh delegation. Digital Bangladesh is changing life with a digital touch and we're going to find out all about it. First, I'd like to speak to Mr. Jaharul Hake, who is chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. Mr. Hake, thank you very much indeed for being with us. I'd like to start off by asking you what is the value for you at events such as ITU Telecom World 2018 here in Durban? Thank you for your question. It's a great achievement for Bangladesh to attend this digital period and 2018 ITU digital world. Bangladesh now improved a lot and Bangladesh achieves a goal of all international index first, second, third, fourth in EETC and Bangladesh is doing much better than any other and Bangladesh forms a digital Bangladesh first. Could you share with us a little bit some of Bangladesh's experiences on regulatory framework? Yes, regulatory Bangladesh has had a very good regulatory framework and telecommunication you know in 2001 with the help of government, Bangladesh Parliament passed act by which telecommunication regulatory commission is formed. It's a state-to-state body, in our constitution provides, state-to-state body is a part of the state. So as part of state, one of the telecommunication regulatory commission doing a march for the nation, for industrial people, for quality of service. And they are doing for the industrial also business owners who can answer and as part of state, he answered a lot for the industrial state and government and for the industrial people also. I'm also joined here by Dr. Shahjahan Mahmood who is the chairman of the Bangladesh communication satellite company Limited and I'd like to start off by talking about the fact that you just launched Bangladesh's first national communication satellite. What do you expect this impact to be? Thank you for this question. We have, this is basically a satellite company, satellite communication satellite. We have about 40 television stations, we'll be providing bandwidth to these stations and then besides that we'll be providing DTH, distant learning and it will be also used as a backhaul of the telecom services and in the disaster times it will be used as a replacement of the terrestrial or local television, our telephone services and we have about 40 transponders and we'll be using 20 for our own service and then we'll be selling the next, the other 20 to the foreign people, to the foreign country. So we save some foreign exchange by using our own satellite and also we'll be earning some foreign exchange by selling those transponders to other countries. Right. And what's the role of government in driving digital connectivity as successfully as in Bangladesh? Yeah. Bangladesh government is determined to provide internet services, broadband internet services to each and every citizen by 2021. For this we are laying fiber optical cable throughout the whole country, almost 80% of the country is covered by fiber optical cables. But there are also some regions where the fiber optical cables are not economical to take or the company will not take there. So to close this digital divide we are using satellites where recently we'll be providing services to 32 distant islands where the fiber optical cables cannot be taken and we'll be using this satellite services to connect them to provide them internet connectivity and other services. That's wonderful Mr. Moewe. Thank you very much indeed. And finally we've got here Mr. Anir Choudhury who is policy advisor for Access to Information Project for the Prime Minister's Office. Mr. Choudhury I'd like to ask you what does smart digital development mean to you and how is Bangladesh working towards it? Thank you. Smart digital development to us really means providing the right services to the right people at the right time and at the right place. To a student it means connectivity to improve education. To a farmer it means connectivity to improve market access. To a widow it means connectivity to provide social safety net at the right time without having to travel much distance. And that's exactly what Bangladesh is doing using the digital Bangladesh agenda of the government proclaimed by our Honourable Prime Minister. Wonderful. And what single innovation or innovative technology, product, strategy or policy do you think will be most transformative? We have seen a number of transformative technologies in the world in the last few years but I think the one that will really take us by storm is artificial intelligence and we're trying to use that in public service delivery to improve education in various places where there is teacher shortage using our teachers portal which hosts about 350,000 teachers but they learn from each other using artificial intelligence using a smart agriculture portal where farmers and extension workers are actually connected to it and the automated system actually provides a lot of information on agricultural inputs but at the same time artificial intelligence provides a lot of danger to our job market. It creates a lot of danger to our job market as much as opportunities so we're seeing a lot of job loss that's already happening through automation in the manufacturing sector also in the service sector so as we apply the inevitable artificial intelligence in our service provision we have to be very judicious about using the right decisions for creating more opportunities and making sure that the dangers are avoided. Thank you. Mr Choudhury, Mr Mahmood, Mr Hock, thank you very much indeed for being with us and please check out our other videos out on the ITU YouTube channel and our podcasts on the ITU SoundCloud channel too. Thank you.