 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2018 here in Durban, South Africa, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Malcolm Johnson, who is the Deputy Secretary-General for ITU. So, Johnson, welcome to the studio. Thank you, Max. Now, I'd like to start off by talking about digital development. What does digital development mean to you and how is ITU working towards it? Well, my Twitter banner says, my vision is a digital future where nobody is left behind and opportunities have no boundaries. So everyone, everywhere, needs to have access to ICTs. And that means not just those in developed countries, but developing countries. Those living in cities, those living in rural areas. Men and women, old and young, everyone, everywhere, needs to be connected. And this is quite a challenge because, as we know, almost half of the world's population is still offline. And most of those living in rural, remote, isolated communities where connectivity is difficult. Because, often because of the terrain, because they're isolated, but also because the return on investment in those areas is much poorer, of course, than the urban areas. So I think that's the biggest challenge facing ITU when ITU's mission is to connect the world. And clearly, we need to reach out to all these areas. Something I'm particularly passionate about, having been born and brought up in a little village in the middle of Wales. So I can very much relate to that. But it's not just a question of connectivity because statistics show that 80% of the world's population is covered by at least 3G services. So it's clearly other reasons why people are not connecting. And of course, one of the main things is affordability. The services and the equipment have to be affordable. But also the content has to be relevant to people in order for them to invest in the service or by the equipment. So content has got to be relevant to the locality. It's got to be in the local language. People have to have the digital literacy skills to take advantage of it. And also, of course, people need to be able to trust the technology. So ITU is doing a lot, of course, on addressing these challenges. I mean, the core function of ITU going back to its origin is to harmonize the spectrum, coordinate satellite orbits, and develop common standards. Only through that do we have interoperability, interconnectivity, and can we benefit from the economies of scale to bring down the costs. So that's a very important area of ITU work. And of course, I believe the organization needs to do a lot more on the developmental side. We have to put more resources into capacity building and into projects to bring everyone online to give access to the technology. So in ITU, we have a lot of expertise. We have 600 private sector members. We have thousands of experts working at ITU. So we have the expertise, but we don't have the big budget. The big budget of the donor agencies like UNDP or World Bank. So I think we need to do a lot more to collaborate with these other organizations so that we bring our relevant competencies to the table. We avoid duplication of effort and pool our resources to meet the common good. In terms of innovation, I think innovation, obviously, is particularly important and very much in evidence here at ITU Telecom World, what single innovation or innovative technology, product, strategy, or policy do you think is going to be the most transformative? Well, technology is moving at an ever-accelerating pace. I believe ITU has to ensure that these major technological advances like IoT, 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud, don't widen the gap between the developed and the developing countries, but close the gap. So we need to concentrate on some of our key flagship initiatives, such as bridging the standardization gap and the conformance and interoperability program. We need to involve people from developing countries in this work so that their own specific requirements are included in our standards, and that they have a better understanding of these very complex standards and know which ones suit them best and how to implement them. And also, of course, the conformance and interoperability program was set up to ensure that products coming onto the market meet international standards and not counterfeit, and can interoperate with products produced by different vendors. So I was very pleased at the Garner Day event yesterday to see that these initiatives are bearing fruit. Garner established a testing center for West Africa. So it's very nice to see that these initiatives are bearing fruit. Yes, as well as Garner, there are lots of other countries here as well who are all very much benefiting from the conversations and the exchange of information here. I wanted to ask you, what do you think is the key value for events such as ITU Telecom World? Well, for me personally, to start with, as you know, I spend most of my time in Geneva. My job is managing the organization, but also running the project on the new building, taking a lot of my time. So it's very nice to be able to come here and have the opportunity to meet so many friends and colleagues from around the world, to talk with them about how ITU can further improve its efforts to meet the needs of the industry and our membership. But for the participants, it's a very nice platform, I believe, because it's a tremendous mix. Government regulators, academia, private sector, and of course we have the startups and the SMEs participating. So it's a wonderful platform for people to establish new business connections, develop business partnerships, develop their strategy, get some good ideas to take home, and further their businesses. And so I see that as being very beneficial, and I've heard that from a lot of the participants. They've found it very beneficial, which is very nice to hear. I believe that it will help them with their businesses, particularly interested in helping the startups, SMEs. That's the really focus of the event and it seems to be the case. I'm very keen to see a new category of membership for SMEs. Hopefully that will be addressed at the Plenty Potential Conference next month and allow them to participate in ITU's work because a lot of the innovation is coming from them. And ITU needs them because it takes a long time to develop the standards to meet the new technologies. We need to see into the future and a lot of the future is coming out of startups. So we need them to participate and their participation will help them because they can make the connections through the fantastically wide membership that we have in ITU, meet, make up partnerships with some of the big companies. Perhaps we could finish with a message from you to participants here at ITU Telecom World in Durban, but also for those watching and listening around the globe. Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you for participating. I think it's been a wonderful event. I'd like to especially thank our hosts, of course, the South African government and also, of course, the city of Durban for such a friendly and welcoming reception that we've enjoyed here. It's a beautiful city. It's nice to be back in Durban. And I think that, as I said, everybody has benefited. I would hope that it's going to help their businesses to move forward and will, through that, will help bring this wonderful technology to everyone everywhere. And I hope that we'll see you all at ITU World Telecom next year. Welcome, Johnson. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.