 We're here at WRC 19, the World Radio Communication Conference which has been held in Shamashshake in Egypt and I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Arti Holler who is the Secretary General of the EMEA Satellites Operators Association and is also co-chair of the Global Satellites Coalition, GSC. Welcome to the studio. Thank you. Now let's talk a little bit about WRC 19. Why is this an important event in your calendar? So I mean we've spent the last four years preparing for this event and it's really at a very crucial time for the satellite industry. If you consider what's happening in our industry over the last just two, three years there's been so much innovation. So a lot of the issues that we're dealing with at this WRC will allow us to on the one hand optimize the use of existing satellite spectrum. So what I mean by that is introducing new satellite services into the spectrum that we already have so that we can share amongst different operators and be more flexible and do a lot more with what we already have. But also there's such a booming demand for new applications and new satellite services and of course with the Gigabit Society and 5G how are we going to deal with all of the data that needs to be transmitted. So that's another big issue for satellite. We are looking to access or to secure our access and make sure that it is safe to allow satellite operators to invest into new systems to enable higher capacity services on a global basis. Now GSC has got a stand here in a special part of WRC which is an exhibition area. I wanted to ask you what kind of conversations have you been having here on that stand? I've actually been thrilled to be receiving quite a few regulators who approach SOA and GSC and say that first of all what is the GSC? What is this coalition? Because it's new, it's the new branding of the coalition between seven satellite associations of which SOA is one. But regulators have come to us and said you know we don't know what to do, we're told one thing by the satellite industry, something else from the mobile industry for example on C-Band, what is it, how should we decide? That's really nice because it enables us to help them deepen their understanding of how spectrum is used especially within their countries and one of the main questions that I ask them is well if you're going to think about allowing mobile to access what has previously been satellite spectrum you must ask yourselves how are you going to provide alternatives for the services that we are providing today. At the end of the day it's the user who counts and they are relying on whether it's aviation safety in Africa or broadband for schools or for cyber cafes or healthcare or emergency communications there's so many things. What is going to happen to those services if the satellite industry is no longer able to provide them in the spectrum that we are doing so today? So that's the approach that we take with regulators is you know please consider all of the investment that's gone into this from the satellite sector, consider is there a replacement for the services that you're potentially putting at risk and come at it from a pragmatic user centric perspective. Now it's obviously a spectrum is a very finite resource and this conference lasts for about four weeks where everybody's toing and froing and talking about these issues but at the end of the day people seem to come away hopefully with the results that they were looking for. Do you think that that would be the case this time round? Let's hope so. We've worked very very hard to come this far from a satellite perspective we are very much about all technologies have a role to play, we are complementary, it is unfortunate that regulators often find themselves having to pick winners or they feel that they need to choose and some of the agenda items indeed make it seem that way but we firmly believe that without satellite there will be no 5G, without satellite we will not achieve the sustainable development goals and all the other missions and objectives that so many regulators have but also that the ITU has. So we certainly believe that it's possible to accommodate the requests of different stakeholders whether it's IMT, whether it's HAPS, whether it's satellite and drive a win-win solution. And satellite comes very much into its own when it comes to emergency communications in times of disaster. Absolutely and I think just back in October the ITU signed onto the charter that the satellite industry has with the United Nations Emergency Telecoms Cluster and in this year alone it has been activated already twice. If you visit our stand you will see a statement by the Mozambique regulator where in speaking about Cyclone Edae earlier this year he said the biggest mistake that we made was to phase out satellite when fiber arrived and I think that kind of a statement is very powerful and it really hits home and it makes you realize and it certainly made the Mozambique regulator realize that gosh we need, we need to make sure that we can cope not just with the ambitious goals that are driving us and wanting us to bring higher capacity services to all of our citizens but that we are also equipped for times of need. And in the Bahamas of course there was a lot of destruction caused by the hurricane there and a lot of the terrestrial communications went down very quickly. Absolutely, absolutely and I would be amiss not to point out the ITU's role in all of this as well because of course when you are bringing in satellite equipment sometimes that's quite strange for customs controls and so on and the ITU with its strong relations with regulators across all countries for example in Mozambique they really helped unblock the equipment without which I don't know how many lives would have been lost. And you mentioned ITU what about the work of the study groups how important do you think are the study groups in terms of their studies of course, their reports, the resolutions etc and how does that affect the industry? They're fundamental I mean I think we celebrated the 110th anniversary of the study groups just a year or two ago but what concerns me a little is that sometimes they're quite overloaded, their work is absolutely crucial but at the same time it needs to be manageable and for example with the agenda item 1.13 that is being treated at this WRC and the study groups are asked to study 33.25 gigahertz of spectrum for mobile technologies which is a huge amount and that's just one agenda item and they were preparing for so many. Can we talk a little bit about last week there was a big event to the network of women event are you involved with the network of women here? To be honest I haven't put myself forward as a mentor I actually could benefit from having a mentor myself it's never easy to navigate a WRC but I think this kind of initiative from the ITU is certainly a very very welcome one indeed I heard comments from my colleagues that oh I'm glad you're going to be interviewed because we've only seen a handful of women who've been interviewed so far so I think all of these initiatives are certainly very welcome and good for our industry. I was going to say because the gender balance here isn't exactly balanced is it? No it's not but the ones who are here we are we try to make ourselves hurt. Very strongly well that's wonderful well thank you so much for being with us in the studio and hopefully you will get what you want at the end of this this long four weeks and we hopefully will catch up with you again at some stage in the near future. Thank you. Thanks very much indeed.